f*. 
V 


Science  J)ruiter0 
HISTORY 

OF 

PHILOSOPHY 


FOR  USE  IN  HIGH  SCHOOLS,  ACADEMIES, 
AND    COLLEGES 


THOMAS    HUNTER,  M.A.  (GLASG.) 


NEW  YORK  •:•  CINCINNATI  •:•  CHICAGO 

AMERICAN     BOOK    COMPANY 


PRIMER    SERIES. 

SCIENCE    PRIHERS. 

HUXLEY'S   INTRODUCTORY  VOLUME. 

ROSCOE'S   CHEMISTRY. 

STEWART'S   PHYSICS. 

GEIKIE'S  GEOLOGY. 

LOCKYER'S    ASTRONOMY. 

HOOKER'S    BOTANY 

FOSTER    AND     TRACY'S    PHYSIOLOGY    AND 

HYGIENE. 

GEIKIE'S   PHYSICAL  GEOGRAPHY. 
HUNTER'S    HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 
LUPTON'S    SCIENTIFIC  AGRICULTURE. 
JEVONS'S    LOGIC. 

SPENCER'S    INVENTIONAL   GEOMETRY. 
JEVONS'S    POLITICAL  ECONOMY 
TAYLOR'S   PIANOFORTE  PLAYING. 
PATTON'S    NATURAL    RESOURCES    OF  THE 

UNITED   STATES. 

HISTORY    PRIHERS. 

WENDEL'S    HISTORY   OF  EGYPT. 
FREEMAN'S    HISTORY  OF  EUROPE. 
FYFFE'S   HISTORY  OF  GREECE. 
CREIGHTON'S   HISTORY  OF  ROME. 
MAHAFFY'S   OLD   GREEK   LIFE. 
WILKINS'S    ROMAN    ANTIQUITIES. 
TIGHE'S   ROMAN   CONSTITUTION. 
ADAMS'S  MEDIAEVAL  CIVILIZATION. 
YONGE'S  'HISTORY  OF   FRANCE. 
GROVES   GEOGRAPHY. 

LITERATURE   PRIflERS. 

BROOKE'S    ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 
W  ATKINS'S    AMERICAN   LITERATURE. 
DOWDEN  S    SHAKSPERE. 
ALDEN'S    STUDIES   IN   BRYANT. 
MORRIS'S    ENGLISH   GRAMMAR. 
MORRIS     AND    BOWEN'S    ENGLISH    GRAM- 
MAR   EXF.RaSES. 

NICHOL'S  ENGLISH    COMPOSITION. 
PEILE'S   PHILOLOGY. 
JECE'S  GRE££    LITERATURE 
GLADS'-'ONK'S    HOMER. 
TGZER'3   CLASSICAL  GKOGPAPH\  , 


COPYRIGHT,    1900,   BY 

THOMAS    HUNTER. 


HUNTER'S  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 
W.  P.    14 


PREFACE 


This  book  gives  a  simple  and  succinct  account 
of  the  lives  and  doctrines  of  the  great  systematic 
philosophers  and  of  those  ancient  and  mediaeval 
philosophers  who  have  proposed  some  explana- 
tion of  existence  or  some  theory  of  conduct.  The 
word  "philosophy"  in  the  title  of  this  book,  in 
accord  with  long-established  usage,  refers  for  the 
most  part  to  metaphysics  (or  ontology)  and  in  a 
less  degree  to  ethics.  The  pupil  will  therefore 
find  only  incidental  reference  to  writers  who  have 
earned  their  distinction  by  works  on  logic  or  on 
political  economy,  and  to  modern  writers  who 
have  formulated  no  system  in  metaphysics  such 
as  would  entitle  them  to  rank  with  so-called  sys- 
tematic philosophers. 

The  questions  at  the  end  of  the  book  follow 
exactly  the  order  of  the  corresponding  statements 
in  the  text,  and  the  answers  can  thus  be  had  at 
once.  The  pupil  is  advised  to  pursue  the  fol- 
lowing method  :  Read  an  article ;  then  turn  to  the 
questions  on  that  article  and  give  the  answers 
from  memory;  and  so  proceed  throughout  the 
book.  In  this  way  the  invaluable  quality  of  pre- 
cision will  be  given  to  the  philosophical  infor- 
mation acquired  from  the  study  of  the  text,  and 


M91713 


4  PREFACE. 

the  confusion  of  ideas  that  might  result  from  any 
undirected  endeavor  to  grasp  and  retain  so  many 
different  thoughts  will  be  avoided. 

The  Vocabulary  contains  explanations  of  such 
words  as  may  not  be  easily  understood  by  the 
pupil ;  and  in  the  Index  is  indicated  the  pronun- 
ciation of  proper  names. 

This  primer  is  designed  to  supply  a  want  long 
felt  in  an  important  domain  of  information  with 
which  no  person,  desiring  to  be  really  well-in- 
formed, can  afford  to  be  entirely  unacquainted. 

THOMAS  HUNTER. 
Chicago. 


CONTENTS. 


PART  I. 


ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 


PAGE 

Thales    7 

Anaximander   8 

Anaximenes 10 

Later  lonians n 

The   Pythagoreans.:..   12 

Xenophanes    : 14 

Parmenides  '. 15 

Zeno  of  Elea  .• 16 

Empedocles  .'. 18 

Heraclitus   19 

Democritus  .  1 20 

The  Sophists   22 


PAGE 

Anaxagoras  . "! 22 

Socrates   23 

The  Megarics 27 

The  Cyrenaics   .......  28 

The  Cynics   29 

Plato   30 

The  Skeptics   34 

The  Epicureans  34 

Aristotle  37 

The  Stoics 41 

The  Neoplatonists  and 
the  Gnostics 47 


PART  II. 


MEDIAEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 


PAGE 

The  Fathers 49 

St.  Augustine 50 

Arabian  Philosophers.  51 

Algazzali 53 

Averroes 53 

The  Schoolmen  54 

Erigena 55 

Roscellinus  .,.--..  ^5 


PAGE 

St.  Anselm   56 

Abelard 56 

Thomas    Aquinas.   57 

Duns  Scotus 58 

William  of  Occam  58 

Roger  Bacon   58 

Bruno   60 

Campanella   62 


CONTENTS. 
PART  III. 


MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 


PAGE 

Francis  Bacon  63 

Descartes    67 

Later  Cartesians   69 

Malebranche 69 

Spinoza 70 

Leibnitz   70 

Hobbes 71 

Locke   73 

Condillac   76 

Berkeley 76 

Hume    77 

The  Scottish  School..   79 
Reid  .  .80 


Questions  . 
Vocabulary 
Index  


PAGE 

Stewart 81 

Hamilton  81 

Brown    83 

Kant    84 

Fichte    86 

Schelling    89 

Hegel   91 

Comte    94 

The  Pessimists 98 

Schopenhauer  ....  99 

Von  Hartmann   ..100 

Spencer    101 


PAGE 
..   109 

,  .     122 
.     126 


HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY: 

PART  I. 
ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

THALES. 

Thales  (about  640  -  548  B.  c.)  is  generally  re- 
garded by  both  ancient  and  modern  writers  as 
the  first  philosopher,  or  the  first  inquirer  to  offer 
an  explanation  of  the  world  of  mind  and  matter 
different  from  the  mythological  explanation  pro- 
vided by  the  works  of  the  poets  and  the  legends 
of  the  people.  The  facts  of  the  biography  of  this 
earliest  of  the  so-called  Ionian  or  physical  phi- 
losophers, as  well  as  his  teaching,  were  not  com- 
mitted to  writing  till  long  after  his  own  time.  To 
Plato  and  Aristotle  he  was  known  only  through 
tradition,  and  it  is  to  the  latter  writer  that  we 
owe  what  we  know  of  his  philosophy.  A  native 
of  Miletus,  in  Ionia,  Asia  Minor,  in  its  flourish- 
ing days,  he  appears  to  have  belonged  to  a  dis- 
tinguished family,  probably  descended  from 
Phoenician  merchants.  For  his  political  services 
he  was  made  chief  of  the  Seven  Sages.  He  was  a 
mathematician  and  astronomer,  and  no  doubt 
learned  much  from  the  Egyptians,  among  whom 
he  sojourned  for  some  time. 

In  philosophy,  Thales  thought  to  simplify  the 
universe  by  referring  it  to  one  great  principle  or 
beginning,  namely  water.  His  reasons  for  this 
doctrine  are  not  known,  but  Aristotle  suggests 
that  he  was  led  to  it  by  studying  the  origin  of 
plants  and  animals,  in  the  composition  and  nour- 
ishment of  which  water  plays  such  an  important 


8  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

part.  ''A  seed  is  naturally  moist;  but  the  princi- 
ple whereby  moist  is  moist,  is  water."  Water,  he 
taught,  antedates  the  world ;  the  world  itself 
floats  in  water ;  the  sun  and  stars  draw  up  their 
substance  from  the  seas ;  even  the  gods — for 
Thales  was  a  believer  in  an  abundance  of  gods  in 
all  things — spring  from  water.  It  is  said  that 
Thales  ascribed  to  water  an  animate  principle  and 
even  regarded  the  world  as  a  great  living  organ- 
ism, a  doctrine  which  took  a  prominent  place 
later  on  in  the  philosophy  of  Plato. 

It  will  be  seen  that  this  early  thinker's  effort 
at  unifying  was  very  remarkable  and  thorough. 
The  selection  of  water  as  a  beginning  seems  arbi- 
trary, but  it  was  the  first  great  hypothesis  of 
science,  the  offering  of  a  grand  synthetic  mind. 
Thales  so  deeply  impressed  his  generation  with 
his  learning  and  ability,  that  the  memory  of  his 
doings  and  teachings  survived  centuries  without 
the  aid  of  the  written  page.  His  great  general- 
ization will  commonly  gain  greater  respect  upon 
greater  reflection. 

ANAXIMANDER. 

Anaximander  (611  -about  547  B.  c.),  the  second 
of  the  Ionian  or  physical  philosophers,  was,  like 
Thales,  a  resident  of  Miletus.  He  was  an  astron- 
omer and  geographer,  and  wrote  a  treatise  "On 
Nature."  These  are  the  only  biographical  facts 
known  regarding  him.  He  is  said  to  have  been 
a  pupil  of  Thales,  but  this  has  been  much  doubt- 
ed. His  theories  show  a  very  great  divergence 
from  those  of  his  reputed  master.  They  have 
been  stated  by  Aristotle;  Diogenes  Laertius,who 
wrote  about  the  close  of  the  second  century  A.  D., 


ANAXIMANDER.  9 

and  is  called  the  "Biographer  of  the  Greek  phi- 
losophers" ;  and  Simplicius,  who  wrote  in  the 
sixth  century  A.  D.  All  three,  no  doubt,  relied  on 
authorities  not  now  extant.  Only  one  sentence 
is  presented  to  us  in  Anaximander's  own  words, 
to  wit :  "All  things  must  in  equity  again  decline 
into  that  form  from  which  they  have  arisen,  to 
render  each  other  atonement  and  punishment  for 
their  offense  against  the  order  of  time." 

Anaximander's  "beginning"  or  first  cause  has 
been  variously  rendered  the  Infinite,  the  Un- 
limited Mass,  Vastness,  or  the  Indefinite.  This 
Infinite  he  conceived  to  have  been  originally 
composed  of  a  chaos  of  small  particles  or  a  spray 
containing  portions  of  every  kind  of  material, 
but  in  utter  confusion.  In  this  he  may  be  said  to 
have  foreshadowed  the  theory  of  the  Atomists  or 
the  Stoics'  doctrine  of  "pneuma"  or  gas,  of  which 
we  shall  treat  later  on.  In  this  state  of  spray 
matter  was  not  subject  to  decay.  The  infinite 
mass  was  full  of  motion.  It  controlled  all  its  own 
movements,  and  its  first  magnificent  operation 
was  separating  the  warmer  spray  from  the  colder. 
The  fiery  element  was  drawn  off  and  in  the  center 
a  mass  condensed  and  formed  the  earth.  The 
earth  became  a  cylinder,  the  breadth  of  which  is 
three  times  its  height.  It  existed  amidst  fire 
which  clung  around  it  like  bark  on  a  tree.  The 
fire  at  length  condensed  into  two  orbs,  which 
stood  at  some  distance,  with  the  earth  midway 
between  them.  The  heat  of  these  orbs  gradually 
hardened  and  dried  the  earth,  and  the  waters, 
having  become  salt,  ran  off  the  surface  and 
formed  a  surrounding  ocean.  Further  conden- 
sation of  the  fiery  element  produced  constella- 
tions which  are  called  gods,  according  to  the 


io  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

orthodox  view  of  the  celestial  bodies.  The 
warmth  of  the  sun  and  other  celestial  bodies  now 
produced  bubbles  in  the  earthy  slime  and  these 
latter  developed  into  fishes.  From  the  fishes 
men  and  animals  were  in  time  developed.  The 
period  of  "atonement,"  however,  he  predicted, 
must  arrive.  The  sea  would  gradually  dry  up 
and  the  fiery  element  would  utterly  consume  the 
earth,  reducing  everything  to  the  ashes  of  the 
primeval  chaos,  whence  a  new  world  would  arise 
as  before,  and  the  whole  operation  be  repeated  in- 
definitely. This  last  opinion  is  called  his  doc- 
trine of  the  Infinite  Series  of  Worlds.  This 
grand  theory  of  Anaximander  had  a  powerful 
effect  on  the  current  of  subsequent  opinion,  and 
has  not  been  without  its  influence  on  modern 
thought. 

ANAXIMENES. 

Anaximenes  (588-524  B.  c.)  was  the  third  of 
the  Ionian  or  physical  philosophers,  and  his  doc- 
trine illustrates  the  tendency  of  the  mind  to  re- 
turn to  its  original  position  after  any  reactionary 
movement.  His  position  much  more  resembles 
that  of  Thales  than  it  does  that  of  his  own  sup- 
posed master,  Anaximander.  He  also  was  a 
native  of  Miletus,  and  the  dialect  of  his  work,  of 
which  only  fragments  are  quoted  in  later  writers, 
was  purely  Ionic. 

Anaximenes  regarded  air  as  the  substance  out 
of  which  all  things  came.  "As  our  soul,"  he  says, 
"which  is  air,  holds  us  together,  so  breath  and 
the  air  compass  the  world."  The  air,  according 
to  Anaximenes,  is  infinite.  The  earth  floats  in 
air  as  a  leaf,  and  is  itself  condensed  air.  In  fact, 
everything  is  air  at  different  degrees  of  density. 


LATER  I  ON  I  AN  S.  11 

Expanding,  air  gives  rise  to  heat  and  at  length, 
in  its  greatest  rarefaction,  to  fire ;  and  condens- 
ing, it  becomes  wind,  then  clouds,  then  water, 
then  earth,  and,  in  its  utmost  condensation, 
stones.  The  sun  and  the  stars  are,  in  like  man- 
ner, formed  by  the  condensing  of  air. 

Anaximenes  is  said  to  have  subscribed  to 
Anaximander's  doctrine  of  the  Infinite  Series  of 
Worlds.  His  doctrine  of  air  probably  originated 
by  comparing  the  world  to  a  living  being.  The 
idea  that  the  world  was  itself  alive  was  a  very 
ancient  one,  and  the  great  importance  of  air  to 
the  individual,  which  led  to  the  breath  or  wind 
and  the  living  spirit  being  so  frequently  identi- 
fied with  each  other  in  thought  and  language, 
might  well  suggest  for  air  an  equal  importance  in 
regard  to  the  earth  as  a  whole.  Anaximenes  is 
said  to  have  been  the  first  to  declare  that  the 
moon  obtains  its  light  from  the  sun,  and  to  have 
also  explained  in  that  way  how  the  moon  be- 
comes eclipsed.  The  correspondence  between 
the  doctrine  of  air  as  formulated  by  Anaximenes 
and  the  "pneuma,"  which  is  the  fundamental  doc- 
trine of  the  Stoic  cosmogony,  is  very  marked. 

LATER   IONIANS. 

In  the  fifth  century  B.  c.  there  were  two  phi- 
losophers who  attained  note  as  adherents  of  the 
ancient  Ionian  school.  These  were  Hippo,  of 
uncertain  country,  who  held  to  the  main  doctrine 
of  Thales ;  and  Diogenes  of  Apollonia,  who  be- 
lieved in  the  original  aerial  essence  suggested  by 
Anaximenes.  Diogenes,  who  must  not  be  con- 
founded with  Diogenes  the  Cynic,  however, 
denied  the  immaterial  and  was  accused  of  athe- 


12  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

ism.    He  was  a  physiologist  and  made  investiga- 
tions into  the  nature  of  veins. 


THE   PYTHAGOREANS. 

Pythagoras  (about  580  -  about  500  B.  c.)  oc- 
cupies a  conspicuous  place  in  the  history  of  early 
speculation.  As  a  philosopher,  reformer,  founder 
of  a  religious  system,  mathematician,  and  astron- 
omer, his  name  will  ever  be  remembered.  His 
service  to  the  science  of  mathematics,  in  its  in- 
fancy, was  especially  great.  In  fact,  he  first  made 
of  it  an  abstract  science,  where  formerly  it  had 
been  regarded  and  studied  merely  for  its  practi- 
cal value.  The  son  of  an  engraver  in  Samos,  he 
early  came  under  the  influence  of  the  teachings 
of  the  Ionian  philosophers.  Much  has  been  re- 
lated of  him  that  is  either  legendary  or  fabulous, 
for  his  later  adherents  regarded  him  as  a  prophet, 
and  his  teachings  as  a  sort  of  religion  on  the 
acceptance  of  which  salvation  depended.  Many 
writings  have  been  attributed  to  him,  which  all 
the  critics  condemn  as  forgeries.  It  is  probable, 
as  later  writers  assert,  that  he  traveled  in  Egypt, 
and  there  became  acquainted  with  the  doctrines 
of  the  Egyptian  priests,  doctrines  for  which  such 
a  mystic  as  he  would  possess  special  appetite  and 
aptitude.  Some  think  that  he  was  forty,  some 
fifty,  and  others  sixty  years  of  age,  when  he 
changed  his  place  of  residence  to  Crotona  in 
Italy.  Here  he  established  a  school  of  asceticism 
and  began  to  attain  fame  as  an  ethical  reformer 
and  metaphysician.  The  members  of  this  society 
held  their  goods  in  common.  They  were  pledged 
to  secrecy  and  are  said  to  have  practiced  the 
same  rigorous  course  as  to  diet  and  general  con- 


THE  PYTHAGOREANS.  13 

duct  as  distinguished  the  Christian  orders  of  later 
date.  Pythagoras  lived  about  twenty  years  in 
Crotona,  after  which  he  and  his  society  were 
driven  out,  because  they  had  become  too  influen- 
tial in  politics.  He  fled  to  Metapontum  and  made 
that  city  his  home  till  his  death  at  an  advanced 
age. 

Aristotle  says  that  the  Pythagoreans  "sup- 
posed numbers  to  be  the  element  of  existence, 
and  declared  the  whole  heaven  to  be  harmony 
and  number."  They  deduced  all  order  and  or- 
ganization from  number ;  number  was  the  great 
original  reality,  and  the  development  of  the  num- 
bers is  the  development  of  things ;  the  world  is 
but  a  system  of  numbers.  They  drew  attention 
to  the  completeness  and  limited  character  of  odd 
numbers  as  compared  with  the  unlimited  quality 
which  they  saw  in  even  numbers.  Their  famous 
table  of  Contraries  was  drawn  up  in  accord  with 
this  idea.  These  Contraries  are  ten  in  number : 

Limited,  Unlimited, 

Odd,  Even, 

One,  Many, 

Right,  Left, 

Masculine,  Feminine, 

Rest,  Motion, 

Straight,  Bent, 

Light,  Darkness, 

Good,  Evil, 

Square,  Oblong. 

All  numbers  being  evolved  out  of  one,  the  One 
or  central  unity  became  the  Pythagorean  expres- 
sion of  deity.  Many  fantastic  deductions  were 
made  from  the  order  and  combination  of  different 
numbers.  Among  these  was  the  famous  doctrine 


14  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

of  the  Music  of  the  Spheres.  This  idea  rested  on 
the  assumption  that  the  heavenly  orbs  are  sepa- 
rated by  accurate  intervals  like  the  lengths  of 
strings  adjusted  to  produce  musical  tones.  To 
the  Pythagoreans  belongs  the  credit  of  discover- 
ing the  theory  in  music  of  the  numerical  relations 
of  tones,  as  determined  by  the  length  of  the 
vibrating  strings. 

Pythagoras  brought  forward  a  theory  of  as- 
tronomy which  was  at  least  the  first  to  suggest 
the  planetary  motion  of  the  earth.  His  name, 
however,  is  most  commonly  associated  with  his 
ethico-religious  conception  of  metempsychosis 
or  transmigration.  He  taught  that  life  in  the 
body  is  an  imprisonment  for  sin  committed  in  a 
former  existence.  At  death  the  best  people  enter 
the  Cosmos  or  the  great  orderly  unity,  and  the 
worst  pass  to  Tartarus.  The  common  destiny  is 
a  renewal  of  life  in  human  or  lower  animal  form 
according  to  deserts.  Plato  illustrates  these 
ideas  in  his  "Phsedo."  The  morality  enjoined  by 
Pythagoras  includes  reverence  to  gods  and 
parents,  justice,  kindness,  temperance,  purity, 
prayer,  repentance,  and  the  observance  of  a 
ritual.  The  Pythagoreans  were  succeeded  by 
the  Neo-Pythagoreans,  more  particularly  a  reli- 
gious sect. 

XENOPHANES. 

Xenophanes  (about  572  -  480  B.  c.)  was  the 
first  of  the  Eleatics,  teaching  their  great  doctrine 
of  unity  in  its  theological  form.  He  was  an 
Ionian,  a  rhapsodist  (reciter  of  poetry),  and  for 
many  years  went  to  and  fro  among  the  cities  of 
Greece  exercising  his  calling.  At  last  he  prob- 
ably went  to  Lower  Italy  and  settled  at  Elea, 


PARMENIDES.  15 

where  he  spent  the  latter  part  of  his  long  life. 
He  lectured  on  a  great  many  different  subjects. 
He  also  wrote  a  poem  "On  Nature,"  of  which 
fragments  have  been  preserved. 

The  theory  of  Xenophanes  placed  him  in 
strong  opposition  to  the  popular  mythology.  He 
taught  that  there  can  be  only  one  Best  and  that 
none  of  the  gods  can  be  governed  by  another, 
though  his  manner  of  statement  seems  to  con- 
cede the  existence  of  many  gods  of  minor  power. 
Nevertheless,  he  identified  the  world  with  the 
one  "greatest"  god,  so  he  is  properly  the  first  of 
the  pantheists  (those  who  hold  that  the  universe 
is  God).  He  held  this  one  to  be  eternal  and 
unchangeable,  but  not  infinite.  He  denounced 
and  satirized  Homer  and  Hesiod  for  their 
ascribing  human  forms  and  unworthy  deeds 
to  gods.  As  to  creation,  he  held  that  the 
earth  formed  itself  from  the  sea,  and  he 
pointed  to  petrifactions  as  proof  of  this.  He  also 
taught  that  earth  and  sea  would  periodically  mix 
and  separate.  The  sun  and  stars  were  to  him 
burning  masses  formed  every  day. 


PARMENIDES. 

Parmenides,  of  Elea  (born  about  520  B.  c.), 
considered  by  Aristotle  to  have  been  the  ablest 
of  the  Eleatics,  was  revered  by  the  ancients  and 
received  a  lasting  monument  from  Plato  in  the 
well-known  dialogue  which  bears  his  name.  He 
came  of  a  rich  and  distinguished  family,  and  is 
said  to  have  been  a  pupil  of  Xenophanes.  Of  his 
metrical  work  "On  Nature"  about  160  lines  have 
been  preserved  in  the  books  of  Sextus  Empiricus 
and  Simplicius.  His  doctrine  is  that  the  one  only 


16  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

exists,  that  the  many  has  an  apparent  or  phenom- 
enal but  no  real  existence.  Only  being  is;  non- 
being  is  not ;  there  is  no  becoming.  Parmenides 
must,  however,  be  regarded  as  a  dogmatist  rather 
than  a  skeptic,  for,  far  from  distrusting  the  cri- 
terion of  reason,  he  considered  that  if  a  doctrine 
can  not  be  passed  upon  and  known  by  the  senses 
it  is  necessarily  untrue.  "The  existent  alone  is 
thinkable,  and  only  the  thinkable  is  real,"  is  one 
of  his  epigrams.  He  also  had  a  cosmogony  or 
theory  of  the  origination  of  the  world.  He  re- 
garded Eros,  which  is  the  love-passion  or  the 
god  of  love,  as  the  ruling  power  in  the  work  of 
creation. 


ZENO  OF  ELEA. 

Zeno  of  Elea  (born  about  490  B.  c.),  not  to  be 
confused  with  Zeno  the  Stoic,  was  a  favorite  dis- 
ciple of  Parmenides.  His  logical  acuteness  and 
subtlety  are  still  much  admired.  Aristotle  calls 
him  the  inventor  of  dialectic  or  argument  whose 
aim  is  the  discovery  of  truth.  About  all  that  is 
known  concerning  his  life  is  that  he  was  born 
about  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century  B.  c., 
and  that  a  short  time  before  his  death  he  was 
accused  of  being  connected  with  a  plot  against 
a  tyrant,  for  which  offense  he  endured  tortures 
with  philosophic  fortitude. 

Zeno  directed  his  logic  against  the  idea  of 
plurality.  He  argued  that  if  there  be  many 
then  being  would  be  both  infinitely  small  and  in- 
finitely great ;  small  to  infinity  because  the  units 
composing  it  must  be  indivisible  and,  therefore, 
without  magnitude;  great  to  infinity  because 
each  part  must  have  a  part  before  it,  this  second 


ZENO  OF  ELBA.  17 

part  must  have  a  third  before  that,  and  so  on  to 
infinity.  He  is  probably  most  remembered  by 
his  four  arguments  against  the  possibility  of 
motion.  These  are : 

(1)  An  object  setting  out  to  go  from  one  point 
to  another  distant  point  must  first  traverse  half 
the  distance,  and  before  traversing  the  half  must 
traverse  the  half  of  that  half,  and  so  on  to  infinity, 
thus  traversing  in  a- limited  time  an  unlimited 
number  of  spaces. 

(2)  Achilles  could  never  overtake  a  tortoise 
if  the  latter  is  allowed  a  start  of  him,  for  when 
Achilles  has  reached  the  point  from  which  the 
tortoise   started,  the  tortoise  has   gone  a  little 
further;  when  Achilles  reaches  the  second  point, 
the  tortoise   in   the   interval   has   gone   a  little 
further,  and  so  on  to  infinity ;  Achilles  never  be- 
ing able  to  overtake  the  tortoise. 

(3)  The  flying  arrow  is  at  rest,  for  at  each 
moment  in  its  flight  it  must  be  in  one  place  and 
one  place  only.    To  be  in  one  place  is  to  be  at 
rest.    The  flying  arrow  is,  therefore,  at  rest  dur- 
ing each  moment  of  its  flight  and,  therefore,  dur- 
ing its  entire  flight. 

(4)  A  body  moving  at  a  uniform  rate  passes 
through   equal   spaces  in  equal  times.     If  two 
bodies  passing  through   equal   spaces  in   equal 
times  pass  each  other  in  opposite  directions  they 
pass  each  other  still  in  equal  spaces,  but  in  one 
half  the  time.    Zeno  held  that  this  contradicted  a 
law  of  motion  as  it  was  at  that  time  stated. 

The  Achilles  puzzle  has  received  a  ravelling  at 
the  hands  of  John  Stuart  Mill.  Ifis  refutation 
rests  on  the  statement  that  Zeno  here  confuses 
two  entirely  different  kinds  of  infinity :  the  in- 
finitely divisible  and  the  infinitely  expanded.  The 


1 8  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

former  is  an  infinity  which  Achilles  could  attain 
and  surpass  in  a  few  seconds.  Zeno  assumes  that 
this  infinity  could  never  be  attained.  There  are 
still  many  thinkers,  however,  that  see  in  motion 
a  logical  contradiction  which  can  no  more  be 
explained  than  any  of  the  categories.  They  are 
not  satisfied  with  the  attempted  explanations  and 
regard  the  difficulty  as  real,  and  insurmountable 
by  the  human  mind. 

EMPEDOCLES. 

Empedocles,  of  Agrigentum  (about  490  -  430 
B.  c.),  illustrates  to  us  in  his  poem  "On  Nature," 
of  which  some  400  lines  are  preserved,  the 
gradual  advance  of  scientific  inquiry  subor- 
dinated to  philosophic  speculation.  He  was,  like 
his  father,  a  leader  of  the  people,  and  opposed  to 
tyrants.  His  memory  has  been  embalmed  in  the 
most  appreciative  myths  and  legends.  As  physi- 
cian, priest,  and  thaumaturgist  (wonder  worker), 
he  visited  cities  in  Sicily  and  Italy,  winning  re- 
spect and  renown. 

The  philosophy  of  Empedocles  recognizes  four 
roots  for  things :  earth,  water,  air,  and  fire.  These 
did  not,  according  to  Empedocles,  come  into 
being  nor  can  they  ever  be  destroyed.  Their 
mingling  and  separation  give  rise  to  all  the  forms 
and  substances  we  see  around  us  and  account  for 
the  changes  and  dissolution  which  periodically 
occur.  Love  is  the  power  that  mingles ;  hate,  the 
power  that  separates.  In  the  sphere  or  totality  of 
existence,  love  is  supreme,  having  hate  complete- 
ly under  subjection.  Empedocles  indorsed  the 
philosophy  of  plurality  and  becoming.  He  ex- 
plained the  sensations  of  light,  smell,  and  taste 


HERACLITUS.  19 

by  the  theory  which  so  long  held  sway  in  the 
early  days  of  science,  namely,  that  they  depend 
on  effluxes  of  fine  particles  that  penetrate  the 
pores  of  the  several  organs  of  sense.  His  idea  of 
the  origin  of  plants  and  animals  is  remarkable. 
The  elements,  in  combining,  first  formed  heads, 
arms,  necks,  and  every  limb  and  organ  and  part 
in  independent  completeness.  Most  of  these 
forms  perished,  but,  where  adapted  and  fitted  to 
one  another,  they  were  eventually  gathered  up 
into  a  few  complete  bodies,  which  became  the 
progenitors  of  subsequent  living  things.  Em- 
pedocles  taught  the  doctrine  of  transmigration, 
that  the  beasts  are  the  kindred  of  man  and  that 
their  flesh  should,  therefore,  not  be  eaten. 


HERACLITUS. 

Heraclitus,  of  Ephesus  (about  535  -  475  B.  c.), 
is  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  profound  thinkers 
of  these  early  days.  Certain  modern  schools,  as 
that  of  Hegel,  remember  him  with  special  rever- 
ence as  their  forerunner.  He  was  sometimes 
called  the  "crying  philosopher"  because  of  the 
asceticism  and  misanthropy  of  his  views.  Politi- 
cally his  sympathies  were  aristocratic,  but  he 
renounced  the  hereditary  office  of  "basileus"  or 
king  of  sacrifices  and  retired  to  the  mountains, 
where  he  lived  on  herbs  and  roots.  On  one  oc- 
casion, in  answer  to  an  invitation  of  Darius  to 
spend  some  time  at  his  court,  he  wrote :  "They 
[men]  only  aspire  to  a  vain  glory  and  obstinacy 
and  folly.  As  for  me,  I  know  no  malice.  I  am 
the  enemy  of  no  one.  I  utterly  despise  the  vanity 
of  courts  and  never  will  place  my  foot  on  Persian 
ground.  Content  with  little,  I  live  as  I  please." 


20  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

Heraclitus  is  said  to  have  been  a  pupil  of 
Xenophanes.  His  great  doctrine  is  that  all 
things  are  a  "perpetual  flux  and  reflux";  there 
is  no  permanent  being,  but  whatever  we  see  is 
but  part  of  the  universal  intelligence  of  God.  The 
testimony  of  the  senses  is  to  be  trusted  but 
reason  is  imperfect.  Heraclitus  ascribed  the 
beginning  to  warm  ether  or,  as  it  is  sometimes 
called  by  him,  fire.  It  is  self-kindled  and  self-ex- 
tinguished. "No  one  of  the  gods  nor  of  the 
human  race  has  made  this  world,  but  it  ever  was 
and  is  and  shall  be  an  eternal  living  fire."  Hera- 
clitus said  strife  rules  the  world.  "That  which 
strives  against  another  supports  itself."  "The 
harmony  of  the  world  depends  on  opposite  ten- 
sion, like  the  lyre  and  the  bow."  From  fire 
comes  water,  and  from  water,  earth.  The  sun  is 
a  fire  renewed  every  day  from  fresh  vapors  rising 
from  the  sea.  The  world  came  from  fire  and 
goes  to  fire,  to  be  reconstructed  and  demolished 
as  before. 


DEMOCRITUS. 

Democritus  (about  460  -  362  B.  c.),  who  has 
been  called  "the  laughing  philosopher,"  was  the 
first  of  the  Atomists,  and  his  doctrines  are,  in  the 
main,  identical  with  the  materialism  professed 
by  some  in  the  present  age.  Some  portions  of 
the  Atomic  theory  are  also  regarded  as  tenta- 
tive postulates  for  sciences  that  do  not  pre- 
sume to  speculate  on  the  origin  of  things. 
Democritus  was  a  native  of  Abdera,  of  noble 
lineage.  He  had  a  large  patrimony,  which  he 
spent  in  travel  in  the  East  and  in  Egypt.  He  had 
a  vast  amount  of  learning  when  he  returned  from 


DEMOCRITUS.  21 

Egypt,  and  his  fellow-citizens  are  said  to  have 
raised  a  handsome  subscription  for  him.  He 
died  at  a  very  advanced  age.  Diogenes  Laertius 
says  that  he  left  behind  him  seventy-two  works, 
but  of  all  this  mass,  covering  every  topic  then 
discussed,  only  small  fragments  have  survived. 

Democritus  taught  that  everything  is  reducible 
to  the  full  (plenum)  and  the  void.  Being  fills 
space ;  non-being,  void.  Being  consists  exclu- 
sively of  matter,  and  matter  is  composed  of 
atoms,  minute,  indivisible,  and  each  completely 
filling  the  space  it  occupies.  These  atoms  are 
underived,  imperishable,  and  homogeneous. 
They  differ  only  in  form  and  size.  They  were 
originally  in  motion,  an  essential  motion  that 
accounts  for  the  combinations  in  organic  and 
inorganic  forms.  In  falling,  the  heavier  atoms 
struck  against  the  lighter  and  produced  a  whirl- 
ing motion.  Worlds  grow  up  in  this  way  by 
accretion.  Fire  and  the  soul  are  made  of  fine, 
smooth,  round  atoms.  Breathing  is  for  the  pur- 
pose of  keeping  up  the  soul's  supply  of  these. 
Death  is  but  a  scattering  of  atoms.  Perception  by 
the  senses  is  the  effect  of  small  material  images 
that  are  given  off  by  bodies  in  every  direction. 
All  sensation  is  reduced  to  touch.  Matter  has 
only  two  primary  qualities,  extension  and  resist- 
ance ;  the  other  so-called  qualities  are  secondary 
or  only  sensations  in  us. 

Democritus  openly  opposed  the  popular 
mythology,  and  some  say  that  it  was  his  ridicule 
that  earned  for  him  the  title  of  "laughing  phi- 
losopher." Others  say  it  was  his  moral  idea  that 
nothing  should  be  taken  too  seriously;  that  the 
pains  and  cares  of  life  should  be  dismissed  from 
mind.  The  Epicureans  adopted  his  general 


22  ANClhN'l  PHILOSOPHY. 

atomic  theory,  and  also  his  moral  theory  that 
tranquillity  of  mind  is  the  highest  good.  Democ- 
ritus  advised  against  marriage  and  everything 
that  seems  to  threaten  the  condition  of  ease  and 
peace. 

THE  SOPHISTS. 

The  Sophists,  who  flourished  about  the  middle 
of  the  fifth  century  B.  c.,  did  not  properly  con- 
stitute a  philosophical  school.  They  occupied 
the  higher  walk  of  the  teaching  profession,  and 
taught  the  arts  of  logic  and  declamation  for  the 
forum,  the  senate,  the  bar,  or  the  debating  plat- 
form. They  are  sometimes  referred  to  as  if  they 
formed  a  school  of  thought.  In  a  negative  sense 
only  could  they  be  said  to  have  done  so,  for  they 
had  no  positive  philosophical  system  in  common. 
They,  however,  generally  expressed  skepticism 
of  the  possibility  of  attaining  a  knowledge  of 
truth.  Their  rise  and  influence  marks  the  first 
pause  in  the  work  of  inquiry.  The  most  notable 
sophists  were  Protagoras,  of  Abdera ;  Gorgias,  of 
Leontini ;  Hippias,of  Elis ;  and  Prodicus,of  Ceos. 
Protagoras,  author  of  a  treatise  called  "Truth/' 
by  making  each  man  a  law  unto  himself,  and 
Gorgias,  who  wrote  "On  Nature,"  by  his  com- 
plete philosophical  and  moral  skepticism, 
brought  upon  themselves  and  upon  their  whole 
class — though  the  latter  is  said  scarcely  to  have 
deserved  it — Plato's  immortal  censure. 

ANAXAGORAS. 

Anaxagoras  (about  500-428  B.  c.),  native  of 
Clazomenae,  in  Asia  Minor,  is  an  impressive 
figure  in  the  history  of  early  Greek  philosophy. 


SOCRATES.  23 

He  sacrificed  his  property  and  his  political  pros- 
pects to  the  search  for  knowledge,  for  fear  lest 
these  might  in  any  way  interfere  with  his  whole- 
hearted devotion  to  that  work.  He  spent  the 
best  part  of  his  life  at  Athens,  where  he  became 
the  victim  of  religious  persecution  and  was  con- 
demned to  death  but  allowed  to  go  into  exile.  He 
died  at  Lampsacus  at  an  advanced  age.  He  was 
an  intimate  of  Pericles  and  Euripides,  but  lived 
an  ascetic  life,  studying  astronomy,  mathematics, 
and  philosophy  for  the  love  of  truth. 

Anaxagoras  teaches  that  all  things  existed 
from  the  beginning  in  infinitesimally  small  frag- 
ments, thus :  fragments  of  gold,  fragments  of 
flesh,  etc.  The  task  of  collecting  these  fragments 
and  arranging  them  was  performed  by  mind  or 
reason.  This  mind  (nous)  was  illimitable  and  in- 
dependent of  the  likewise  illimitable  mass  of 
fragments.  The  first  step  towards  organizing 
was  the  rotary  movement  of  the  fragments. 
These  fragments  appeared  at  first  like  cold  mist 
and  warm  ether.  They  next  formed  water,  earth, 
and  stones.  Seeds  floating  in  the  air,  carried 
down  with  rain,  produced  vegetation.  Animals 
sprang  from  warm  and  moist  clay.  Anaxagoras 
is  thus  said  to  have  suggested  to  the  Greek  mind 
the  theory  that  nature  is  the  work  of  design. 

SOCRATES. 

Socrates  (about  469-399  B.  c.)  has  been  as- 
signed the  central  place  in  the  history  of  Greek 
philosophy,  it  being  divided  into  two  portions,  of 
which  the  first  is  termed  the  Pre-Socratic.  We 
are  indebted  mainly  to  Plato  and  Xenophon  for 
what  we  know  of  his  life,  for  Socrates  is  one 


24  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

of  the  few  men  of  great  fame  who  never  distin- 
guished themselves  in  the  world  of  action,  and 
who  never  wrote  a  book.  His  deep  and  original 
genius,  however,  found  the  most  excellent  of  re- 
porters, and  his  influence  on  the  world's  thought, 
particularly  in  the  department  of  ethics,  has  been 
immense.  He  was  born  at  Athens,  his  father 
being  the  statuary  Sophroniscus  and  his  mother 
the  midwife  Phaenarete.  He  got  a  good  educa- 
tion of  the  kind  customary  in  those  days,  the  sub- 
jects being  gymnastic,  music,  geometry,  and  as- 
tronomy, including  also  the  higher  course  in 
philosophy  and  culture.  He  then  became  a 
sculptor  like  his  father,  but  believing,  from  cer- 
tain dreams  and  signs,  including  the  voice  of 
his  "daemon"  or  guardian  angel,  who  admonished 
him  all  through  life,  and  an  oracle,  that  his  proper 
work  was  to  educate,  he  soon  changed  his  profes- 
sion. 

Socrates  felt -that  he  was  not  a  wise  man  him- 
self, although  the  oracle  had  pronounced  him 
such,  and  he  accordingly  went  in  search  of  some 
one  who  could  teach  him  wisdom.  He  went  to 
the  reputed  wise  in  search  of  truth,  and,  by  ask- 
ing them  questions,  discovered  that  they  were 
quite  as  ignorant  as  he  considered  himself  to  be. 
He,  indeed,  was  wiser  than  they  if  only  in  the  fact 
that  he  was  conscious  of  his  own  ignorance,  while 
they,  being  ignorant,  continued  to  delude  them- 
selves by  thinking  that  they  were  wise.  He  spent 
his  time  henceforth  in  the  streets  and  the  market 
place,  debating  with  any  one  who  might  profess 
to  know  any  truth  and  be  inclined  to  submit  to 
cross-examination  regarding  it. 

His  appearance  was  extraordinary.  Barefoot 
and  poorly  clad,  squat  and  uncouth  in  form,  his 


SOCRATES.  2$ 

eyes  protruding  and  stolid,  his  lips  thick  and 
sensual,  his  nose  flat  and  turned  up,  he  is  said,  in 
Plato's  "Symposium,"  to  have  resembled  a 
Silenus  image  such  as  might  be  seen  in  shop  win- 
dows. As  the  Silenus,  when  opened,  was  found 
to  contain  images  of  gods,  so  Socrates  was  a 
treasury  of  logic  and  wisdom.  However  great  his 
service  to  the  world,  Socrates  was  not  the  man 
to  make  a  woman  happy,  but  his  wife  Xan- 
thippe's fits  of  exasperation,  over  his  odd  habits 
and  philosophic  calm,  have  been  hurtful  to  her 
memory. 

The  poverty  and  asceticism  of  Socrates,  who 
refused  to  accept  remuneration  from  his  fol- 
lowers, contrasted  strongly  with  the  condition  of 
the  luxurious  and  well-paid  sophists.  Yet  these 
knew  that  he  was  a  real  menace  to  their  class  and 
few  of  them  dared  expose  their  logic  to  his  so- 
called  "elenchus"  or  destructive  questioning 
process.  The  Sophists  had  abandoned  the 
search  for  truth  and  settled  into  a  dogmatic 
indifference.  Socrates  believed  knowledge  at- 
tainable, particularly  in  the  domain  of  ethics.  He 
referred  all  virtue  to  knowledge,  all  vice  to  igno- 
rance, whereas  the  Sophists  rested  them  both  on 
opinion. 

Socrates  believed  in  the  gods,  and  held  the  one 
great  "demiurge,"  the  creator  of  all  things,  the 
soul  of  the  world  as  man's  soul  is  the  soul  of  his 
body,  to  be  supreme  among  the  deities,  and 
therefore  speaks  frequently  as  almost  a  monothe- 
ist.  He  thought  that  God  for  some  unknown 
reason  did  not  desire  men  to  know  how  he 
created  the  world  and  them,  and  he  therefore 
inclined  to  pass  over  the  speculations  of  the  ccs- 
mogonists  as  futile  and  visionary.  Religion  be- 


26  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

came  to  him  thus  the  province  of  faith,  and  ethics, 
the  province  of  knowledge.  Nothing  but  knowl- 
edge of  the  principles  of  conduct  would  answer 
the  practical  purposes  of  life,  and  to  despair  of 
such  knowledge  was  self-destruction.  The  true 
object  of  conduct,  the  summum  bonum,  was  the 
good  rather  than  the  useful.  Socrates  was  em- 
inently constructive  in  attempting  to  demonstrate 
by  means  of  his  elenchus  that  virtue  is  supreme, 
that  justice  only  can  bring  happiness,  that  in- 
justice, conceived  in  folly,  is  always  the  parent 
of  misery  to  him  who  practices  it  as  well  as  to 
him  upon  whom  it  is  practiced. 

Moral  truth,  he  held,  is  contained  in  the  soul 
of  every  one  and  only  requires  to  be  brought  to 
the  birth.  He  naively  compared  his  occupation 
in  assisting  at  this  birth  of  truth  by  means  of  the 
elenchus  to  his  mother's  profession,  and  dis- 
carded rhetoric  (oratory)  in  favor  of  the  dialectic 
method.  Rhetoric  appeared  to  him,  particularly 
in  the  mouths  of  the  Sophists,  to  be  too  often 
successful  in  making  the  worse  appear  the  better 
reason.  He  therefore  shunned  it  as  a  dangerous 
art  for  any  humble  truth-seeker  to  come  in  con- 
tact with.  The  dialogue  form  of  the  works  of 
Plato  is  largely  due  to  the  adoption  by  that 
thinker  of  this  opinion  of  his  master.  Socrates 
sought  definitions,  particularly  of  such  things  as 
justice,  piety,  democracy,  and  law ;  but  by  defini- 
tion he  expected  to  gain  an  idea  of  the  essence 
of  the  things  themselves  rather  than  a  mere 
dictionary  explanation  of  the  name.  There  was 
a  persistent  purpose  observable  in  his  dialogues : 
to  establish  the  truth  of  his  central  ethical  prin- 
ciples. He  gathered  around  him  a  group  of 
admiring  pupils,  youths  of  every  social  condition 


THE  MEGAR1CS.  V 

among  whom  Plato,  Alcibiades,  Xenophon,  and 
Antisthenes  are  the  most  celebrated. 

Socrates,  in  early  life  a  soldier,  at  one  time  a 
senator,  and  for  a  day  the  "epistates"  or  presi- 
dent, was  a  model  of  integrity  in  all  his  dealings. 
The  tribute  of  his  pupils,  Plato  and  Xenophon, 
to  his  virtues  is  the  highest  that  can  be  paid.  He 
died  a  martyr  to  truth.  The  dislike  with  which 
he  was  held  in  influential  circles,  owing  to  his 
reforming  tendency  and  his  departure  from  the 
established  conception  of  polytheism,  culminated 
in  his  paying  the  reformer's  penalty.  He  was 
tried  and  condemned  to  drink  a  potion  of  the 
poison  of  hemlock.  The  sad  story  of  his  death  is 
touchingly  given  in  Plato's  "Phaedo." 

THE   MEGARICS. 

Euclid  of  Megara,  the  founder  of  the  Megarian 
school  of  philosophy,  was  a  disciple  of  Socrates. 
He  was  born  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fifth  century 
B.  c.,  probably  at  Megara,  which  became  the  seat 
of  his  school  after  the  death  of  his  great  teacher. 
He  must  be  carefully  distinguished  from  the 
mathematician,  Euclid  of  Alexandria,  who  flour- 
ished more  than  a  century  later.  It  is  related  of 
Euclid,  that,  while  the  residents  of  Megara  were 
forbidden  to  enter  Athens,  he  came  nightly  in  the 
guise  of  a  woman  to  hear  the  words  of  Socrates. 
He  was  among  the  number  who  heard  Socrates' 
last  discourses  in  prison. 

Euclid's  doctrine  combined  the  Eleatic  meta- 
physical "unity"  with  the  Socratic  idea  of  "the 
good."  Euclid  adopted  the  extreme  view  of  the 
impossibility  of  division,  becoming,  and  motion. 
The  Megarics  were  remarkable  mainly  for  their 


28  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

dialectic,  which  depended  much  on  the  reductio 
ad  absurdum,  the  method  of  argument  which  first 
presumes  the  opponent's  statement  to  be  true 
and  then  infers  absurdities  from  it.  This  method 
was  often  used  in  such  a  quibbling  manner  as  to 
gain  for  the  Megarics  the  title  of  Eristics  or 
"wranglers." 

THE  CYRENAICS. 

Another  disciple  of  Socrates,  Aristippus, 
founded  the  Cyrenaic  school,  which  had  a  brief 
existence,  being  continued  after  his  death  by  his 
daughter  and  grandson,  and  a  few  others,  and 
then  disappearing.  The  school  takes  its  name 
from  Cyrene,  in  Africa,  the  birthplace  of  Aris- 
tippus. The  father  of  this  philosopher  was  a 
wealthy  merchant,  who  sent  him  on  an  errand  to 
Greece.  Aristippus  there  heard  Socrates  and 
forthwith  became  a  follower.  He  accepted  the 
teaching  of  his  master  in  other  respects,  but  in- 
terpreted "the  good"  to  mean  pleasure.  His 
habits  of  ease  and  luxury  offended  Socrates. 
That  he  defended  them  in  conversation  with  the 
latter  is  reported  in  the  "Memorabilia"  of  Xeno- 
phon.  He  taught  that  the  pleasure  of  the  present 
moment  is  the  foremost  consideration,  but  modi- 
fied his  advice  by  recommending  the  virtue  of 
self-control.  Pleasure  should  be  the  slave,  not 
the  master.  Aristippus  made  a  complete  identity 
of  good  and  bad  with  pleasure  and  pain.  He 
extolled  wisdom  as  a  means  of  preserving  the 
mastery  of  desire,  and  some  of  his  later  disciples, 
laying  emphasis  on  this,  approached  almost  to 
the  Cynic  position,  the  one  most  opposite  in 
practice  to  the  Cyrenaic. 


ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY.  29 


THE   CYNICS. 

Few  of  the  early  systems  of  philosophy  are 
more  famous,  at  least  in  name,  than  that  of  the 
Cynics,  largely  on  account  of  the  eccentricity  of 
conduct  to  which  it  gave  rise  in  its  founders  and 
devotees.  The  word  "Cynic"  is  the  Greek  for 
doglike,  and  is  supposed  to  have  been  applied  to 
Cynics  at  first  as  a  nickname  on  account  of  their 
ordinary  snarling  criticalness  and  their  disre- 
gard for  the  decencies  of  life.  The  founder  of 
Cynicism  was  Antisthenes,  a  disciple  of  Socrates. 
He  was  educated  in  Athens  under  famous 
Sophists  and  entered  upon  the  profession  him- 
self. When  he  heard  Socrates  he  changed 
his  mode  of  life  and  emulated  his  master  in  his 
poverty.  There  was  this  difference  in  their  views. 
Socrates  did  not  regard  poverty  as  a  virtue ;  An- 
tisthenes did,  and  extolled  the  idea  of  reducing 
wants  to  the  fewest  number,  and  satisfying  only 
the  most  rigorous  demands  of  nature.  He  con- 
sidered a  cloak,  a  staff,  and  a  cup  to  be  a  sufficient 
equipment.  He  thought  abstract  speculation  fu- 
tile, and  his  school  is  therefore  notable  for  its  con- 
duct and  not  for  any  opinions  except  its  ethical 
opinions.  The  Cynics  carried  the  principle  of  in- 
dependence through  self-denying  to  its  extreme. 

No  account  of  the  Cynics  would  be  sufficient 
without  some  mention  of  the  famous  Diogenes. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  money-changer  of  Sinope,  in 
Pontus.  He  fled  to  Athens,  on  account,  it  is  said, 
of  being  implicated  with  his  father  in  adulterat- 
ing coin.  He  was  then  without  means  and  re- 
solved to  remain  so.  He  adopted  the  Cynic  ideas 
and  divested  himself  of  everything  but  a  cloak, 
a  wallet,  and  a  bowl.  Even  the  bowl  was  thrown 


30  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

away,  when  he  discovered,  on  seeing  a  boy 
scooping  up  water  with  his  hands,  that  it  was  un- 
necessary. He  attached  himself  to  the  following 
of  Antisthenes,  although  that  gruff  individual 
tried  to  drive  him  off  with -a  stick.  He  slept 
sometimes  in  a  tub,  sometimes  on  the  steps  of 
public  places.  He  would  roll  himself  in  hot  sand 
in  summer  and  embrace  snow-covered  statues  ir 
winter,  so  as  to  inure  himself  and  strengthen  his 
powers  of  endurance.  On  a  voyage  to  ^Egina  he 
was  captured  by  pirates  and  sold  as  a  slave  in 
Crete.  He  declared  that  his  trade  was  "to 
govern  men"  and  that  he  wanted  to  be  sold  to  a 
man  who  needed  a  master.  He  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be  bought  by  a  man  who  made  him 
tutor  to  his  children.  He  spent  the  remainder  of 
his  long  life  in  Crete  in  that  position. 

Many  odd  stories  are  told  about  Diogenes. 
His  going  through  Athens  with  a  lantern  in  the 
daytime,  looking  for  a  genuine  man ;  his  reply  to 
Alexander  the  Great,  when  offered  any  favor  he 
might  choose — asking  that  the  king  should 
merely  stand  from  between  him  and  the  sun— 
and  many  other  witticisms  have  made  him  a 
noted  character.  Diogenes  answered  the  argu- 
ments against  motion  by  rising  and  walking. 
Sometimes,  however,  he  was  equalled  in  repartee. 
Stamping  on  Plato's  carpet,  he  exclaimed  :  "Thus 
I  trample  on  your  pride,  O  Plato."  To  this, 
Plato  answered:  "But  with  greater  pride,  O 
Diogenes." 

PLATO. 

Plato  (427  -  347  B.  c.)  was  said  to  be,  on  his 
mother's  side,  a  descendant  of  the  illustrious  law- 
giver, Solon.  He  was  a  pupil  of  Cratylus  the 


PLATO.  31 

Heraclitean,  and  a  follower  of  Socrates.  He 
established  a  school  called  the  Academy,  at 
Athens.  These  are  the  most  reliable  facts  of  his 
life.  Tradition  adds  that  his  name  was  at  first 
Aristocles  and  that  "Plato"  was  a  sort  of  nick- 
name indicating  that  he  was  broad-browed  or 
broad-shouldered.  It  is  said  that  he  wrote  poetry 
but  burned  the  manuscript  on  comparing  his 
production  with  Homer,  that  he  traveled  in 
Egypt,  fought  in  battles,  visited  Syracuse,  quar- 
reled with  Dionysius  the  tyrant,  was  thereupon 
sold  into  slavery  by  him,  and  was  purchased  and 
freed  by  an  admirer  of  his  genius.  The  authority 
for  these  latter  statements — the  last  two  obvious- 
ly somewhat  improbable — is  the  "Epistles  of 
Plato,"  whose  authenticity  of  authorship  is  now, 
however,  generally  doubted. 

Few  men  have  been  the  subject  of  as  high  en- 
comium as  Plato.  His  position  in  literature 
rivals,  if  it  does  not  even  surpass,  his  position  in 
philosophy.  His  dialogues,  with  all  their  dra- 
matic dress  and  felicitous  expression,  make  inter- 
esting reading  to  the  modern  student.  His  most 
quoted  matter  is  clear  and  pleasing,  but  his 
thoughts  on  metaphysics  are  subtle,  for  Plato  is 
one  of  the  severest  of  thinkers,  and  pushes  his 
logic  to  places  that  completely  transcend  the 
imagination  of  most  men.  His  influence  on  the 
thought  of  the  world  has  been  profound  as  the 
theories  he  set  forth.  Plato  was  wealthy  in  ideas, 
and  consequently  stimulating  to  thought.  There 
is  a  general,  but  mistaken,  tendency  in  the  minds 
of  ordinary  readers  to  regard  as  poetical  fancies 
many  of  these  developments  which  he  undoubt- 
edly regarded  as  literal  and  fundamental  truths. 
These  great  conceptions  have  many  of  them 


32  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

little  place  in  modern  thought,  but  the  power 
which  gave  them  momentum  is  still  as  invigorat- 
ing to  the  philosophic  mind  as  ever. 

The  order  in  which  Plato's  dialogues  were 
written  is  not  known.  There  is,  moreover, 
some  difference  of  view  discernible  in  them,  so 
that  a  consistent  philosophical  system  of  the 
great  thinker  can  with  difficulty  be  built  up. 
Among  Plato's  famous  doctrines  in  psychology 
is  that  of  ideas,  or  that  the  general  term  is  the 
only  reality.  The  general  idea  of  a  man  ante- 
dates any  particular  man.  The  reality  lying 
under  all  phenomena,  under  all  changing,  under 
all  becoming,  is  the  general  idea.  The  long- 
drawn-out  controversy  anent  "nominalism"  and 
"realism"  during  the  Middle  Ages  turned  upon 
this  point.  Plato  averred  that  ideas  are  not  per- 
ceived by  us  but  only  remembered.  In  its  past 
existence,  the  soul,  before  it  entered  this  body, 
was  face  to  face  with  truth ;  it  perceived  realities 
just  as  directly  as  it  now  perceives  phenomena. 
But  for  the  memory  of  these  invariable  realities 
it  would  have  no  power  to  generalize  and  would 
pass  from  particular  thing  to  particular  thing  just 
as  irrational  creatures  are  supposed  to  do.  In 
the  domain  of  morals  the  process  is  the  same :  we 
recognize  a  good  act  to  be  good  by  our  recollec- 
tion of  goodness  in  our  former  state  of  existence. 
A  beautiful  object  awakens  the  recollection  of 
our  prenatal  vision  of  unchangeable  beauty.  The 
moral  and  the  aesthetic  faculty,  he  holds,  would 
not  be  possible  to  a  soul  without  this  prior  vision 
and  the  memory  of  it.  These  propositions, 
known  as  his  doctrine  of  Reminiscence,  are  given 
by  Plato  as  his  theory  and  not  as  his  poetical 
notions. 


PLATO.  33 

The  trend  of  the  speculation  of  the  phi- 
losophers of  early  Greece  was  to  monotheism. 
Plato  was  a  monotheist,  subordinating  the  poly- 
theism of  his  day  to  monotheism,  but,  of  course, 
in  this  he  was  by  no  means  original  even  among 
his  own  countrymen,  as  is  shown  by  the  account 
of  the  preceding  pages.  His  views  of  religion 
and  of  the  analogy  between  the  world  and  an 
animal  were  those  apparently  enunciated  by  his 
master,  Socrates.  The  world  of  phenomena  is  a 
place  of  imperfection  for  the  soul  and  we  must 
imitate  the  gods  in  virtue,  temperance,  and 
justice  to  escape  from  the  limitations  which 
that  world  imposes  on  us.  Plato's  doctrine 
of  love,  called  since  Platonic  love,  is  famous. 
Love  is  the  yearning  of  the  soul  for  beauty, 
the  desire  of  like  for  like.  The  divinity  in  us 
is  bound  to  the  divinity  without  us  by  love. 
This  fine  sympathy  between  two  souls,  binding 
them  together,  is  thus  very  different  from  the 
ordinary  and  less  ethereal  emotion.  Plato  says 
virtue  is  knowledge,  but  there  are  arguments  in 
some  of  the  dialogues  expressive  of  a  different 
view. 

Plato's  "Republic"  is  still  one  of  the  dialogues 
most  read  by  students.  It  is  full  of  practical  sug- 
gestions, which  still  apply,  despite  the  material 
alteration  that  has  taken  place  in  social  condi- 
tions. It  has  some  peculiar  recommendations : 
the  philosophers  are  to  be  the  rulers,  the  poets 
are  to  be  banished  for  maligning  the  gods,  the 
musicians,  all  but  the  gravest,  are  to  be  banished 
for  their  general  immoderation  and  the  tendency 
of  their  productions  to  cause  immoderation  in 
others.  In  Plato's  scheme  of  society,  the  family 


34  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

and  the  individual  are  completely  sacrificed  to 
the  State. 

No  very  satisfactory  classification  has  ever 
been  made  of  Plato's  dialogues.  We  may  men- 
tion these  dialogues  as  among  the  best  known : 
Phaedrus,  Lysis,  Protagoras,  Parmenides,  Apolo- 
gia, Crito,  Symposium,  Alcibiades  I.,  Alcibiades 
II.,  Gorgias,  Meno,  Thesetetus,  Phsedo,  Republic, 
and  Timaeus. 

THE  SKEPTICS. 

The  founder  of  the  so-called  Skeptic  school,  a 
sect  whose  opinions  differed  but  little  if  any  from 
those  of  the  leading  Sophists,  was  Pyrrho,  of  Elis 
(about  360-270  B.  c.).  He  was  at  one  time  a 
soldier  with  Alexander  the  Great  in  India.  He 
spent  nearly  all  his  life  a  much  respected  and 
poor  citizen  of  Elis.  As  he  left  no  writings,  we 
are  indebted  to  his  pupil,  Timon,  of  Phius,  for 
our  knowledge  of  his  doctrines.  Timon  em- 
bodied these  in  a  poem  called  "Silloi,"  in  which 
he  poured  ridicule  on  nearly  all  the  Greek  phi- 
losophers. The  Sillographist,  as  he  is  called 
from  the  title  of  his  poem,  indorsed  the  following 
views  of  Pyrrho :  we  know  nothing  concerning 
the  nature  of  things;  we  should  suspend  judg- 
ment ;  the  proper  moral  state  is  imperturbability. 
The  Pyrrhonists,  as  they  were  sometimes  called, 
admitted  that  they  were  skeptical  even  of  their 
own  skepticism.  So  also  did  the  New  or  Middle 
Academy,  founded  by  Arcesilaus  a  century  later. 

THE   EPICUREANS. 

One  of  the  most  widespread  systems  of  opinion 
in  the  centuries  immediately  preceding  the  Chris- 


THE  EPICUREANS.  35 

tian  era,  was  that  of  the  Epicureans.  It  and 
Stoicism,  which  presented  many  essential  points 
of  resemblance,  for  a  time  occupied  almost  the 
entire  field.  Their  practical  and  dogmatic  char- 
acter satisfied  the  requirements  of  men  more 
thoroughly  than  the  feebler  systems  of  earlier 
philosophers.  The  word  "Epicurean"  or  "epi- 
cure" has  acquired  a  degraded  meaning  in  later 
times  such  as  did  not  attach  to  it  in  the  days  of 
Epicurus  and  his  followers. 

Epicurus  (342  -  270  B.  c.),  the  father  of  this 
philosophy,  was  the  son  of  a  schoolmaster  in 
Samos.  He  went  to  Athens  at  the  age  of  eight- 
een. He  was  banished  along  with  the  poorer 
citizens  by  Antipater  the  Macedonian.  He  went 
to  Colophon,  where  his  father  had  settled,  and 
probably  engaged  in  his  father's  profession.  He 
finally  settled  at  Athens  and  spent  there  the  last 
half  of  his  seventy-two  years.  He  bought  a  home 
and  garden  for  80  minae  ($1,500),  and  gathered 
around  him  a  society  of  men  and  women.  They 
ate  at  the  same  table  a  diet  of  barley  bread  and 
water  and  a  very  moderate  allowance  of  wine, 
but  there  was  no  community  of  property.  When 
Epicurus  died  he  left  his  property  mainly  for  the 
support  of  the  younger  members  of  his  society. 
He  wrote  some  three  hundred  books.  The  sub- 
ject of  thirty-seven  of  these  was  "Nature."  We 
have  fragments  of  about  nine  of  his  books  bear- 
ing that  title. 

Epicurus  put  conduct  above  everything  in 
philosophy  and  advised  his  pupils  to  leave  cul- 
ture alone.  He  based  his  system  on  the  dog- 
matic assertion  of  what  is  commonly  called 
"common  sense"  as  opposed  to  "idealism,"  and 
on  the  feelings  of  ordinary  men.  He  said  the 


36  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

ultimate  canon  of  reality  is  sensation;  things 
are  precisely  what  they  seem.  He  carried  this 
idea  to  great  extremes  sometimes,  as  when  he 
declared  that  the  sun  and  the  stars  are  no  larger 
than  they  appear  to  be.  In  order  to  discover  a 
moral  standard  he  advised  a  return  to  nature. 
Epicurus  followed  the  Cyrenaics  in  declaring 
pleasure  the  highest  good  of  life.  The  pleasure 
he  recommended,  however,  was  of  the  calm  and 
equable  sort.  Friendship,  as  an  emotion  more 
temperate  and  subject  to  reason,  he  placed  above 
love  in  his  ethical  economy.  The  individual 
should  cultivate  a  happy  and  peaceful  habit  of 
mind  and  rather  avoid  strong  emotions.  While 
Aristippus  (the  Cyrenaic)  defined  the  happy  life 
as  a  sum  of  moments  of  pleasure,  Epicurus  dis- 
carded this  idea  and  taught  men  to  endeavor  by 
the  practice  of  caution  and  prudence  to  avoid 
present  pleasures  that  are  liable  to  bring  about 
painful  consequences.  Individuals  ought  thus 
to  pick  their  way  and  exercise  their  reason  in  the 
work  of  foresight  and  choice.  Whatever  might 
limit  freedom  or  increase  care  should  be  gener- 
ally avoided.  Epicurus  counseled  abstinence 
from  marriage  and  from  politics.  He  advised, 
however,  a  general  charitable  and  sympathetic 
disposition,  and  reproached  Stoicism  and  Cyni- 
cism as  tending  to  promote  the  opposite  of  that. 
He  also  discarded  fatalism  as  not  in  accord  with 
common  sense.  Bodily  pain  was  held  to  be  more 
endurable  than  mental  pain. 

Epicurus  had  also  a  theory  of  the  universe.  He 
accepted  the  doctrine  of  atoms  and  the  void,  and 
held  that  worlds  arose,  flourished,  and  dissolved, 
and  new  worlds  were  created,  all  through  the  in- 
cessant moving  of  atoms.  The  soul  of  man  was 


ARISTOTLE.  37 

an  inner  body  of  finer  texture.  All  things  sent 
forth  small  images  of  themselves,  which,  strik- 
ing on  the  eye,  made  sight  possible ;  there  could 
be  no  such  thing  as  action  at  a  distance.  The 
individual,  at  death,  ceased  to  be.  Epicurus  thus 
made  liberal  use  of  the  theories  of  Democritus. 
As  for  the  gods,  they  existed,  but  in  peace  and 
rest.  They  had  nothing  to  do  with  either  the 
making  or  the  governing  of  the  world.  They 
never  interfered  in  the  affairs  of  men.  They  were 
examples  for  men,  to  teach  men  the  highest  reach 
of  the  peaceful  and  happy  temperament.  They 
also  disseminated  an  influence  on  men's  souls 
such  as  the  sun  disseminated  on  their  bodies. 

Epicureanism  has  been  very  faithfully  ex- 
pressed in  the  poem  of  the  Roman  Lucretius,  the 
"De  Rerum  Natura,"  highly  esteemed  for  its 
beauty  and  its  logical  forestatement  of  some  im- 
portant conceptions  of  modern  science. 

ARISTOTLE. 

Aristotle  (384  -  322  B.  c.),  the  greatest  of  the 
Greek  philosophers,  was  a  native  of  Stagira,  a 
Greek  colony,  and  hence  is  often  called  "the 
Stagirite."  His  father,  Nicomachus,  was  a  phy- 
sician, who  numbered  the  Macedonian  king 
among  his  patients.  The  historian  of  the  phi- 
losophers, Diogenes  Laertius,  is  the  chief  ancient 
authority  for  the  facts  of  the  life  of  Aristotle. 
When  seventeen  years  of  age,  the  future  phi- 
losopher went  to  Athens  and  enrolled  as  a  pupil 
in  the  Academy  of  Plato.  He  was  easily  the 
ablest  of  the  school.  He  remained  there  until 
Plato  died,  twenty  years  later.  He  differed  from 
his  master  too  much  in  opinions  to  be  appointed 


38  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

head  of  the  school.  He  accordingly  betook  him- 
self to  the  court  of  Hermeas,  ruler  of  Atarneas  in 
Asia  Minor.  He  there  married  the  niece  of  that 
potentate,  and  retired  to  Mitylene.  When  forty- 
two  years  of  age  he  was  appointed  tutor  to  Alex- 
ander the  Great,  then  a  boy  of  fifteen.  When 
forty-nine  years  of  age,  he  returned  to  Athens, 
and  remained  there  till  his  death,  thirteen  years 
later.  It  was  probably  during  the  last-mentioned 
period  that  Aristotle  composed  those  works 
which  have  made  his  name  immortal. 

Aristotle's  school  in  Athens  was  called  the 
Lyceum,  and  his  followers  have  been  called  the 
Peripatetics,  as  they  received  their  lectures  while 
walking  up  and  down  the  shaded  paths  with  their 
master.  Aristotle  abandoned  the  dialogue  plan 
of  Plato  for  the  method  of  direct  demonstration. 
While  Plato  has  always  been  considered  an  ideal- 
ist, Aristotle  is  often  classed  as  an  empiric,  or 
one  who  rests  upon  experience,  and  reasons  up- 
ward from  facts  according  to  the  method  of  in- 
duction, as  opposed  to  deduction,  which  is 
reasoning  downward  from  general  propositions. 
Though  his  temperament  and  practice  were 
clearly  much  more  of  the  exact  scientific  kind 
than  those  of  his  predecessors  in  the  field  of 
philosophy,  the  name  of  Aristotle  used  to  be 
commonly  associated  with  deduction,  especially 
so  by  the  mediaeval  teachers.  This  was  owing 
to  his  elaboration  of  the  syllogism,  the  special 
instrument  of  deduction.  The  syllogism  is  beau- 
tifully expounded  in  his  logic,  a  science  created 
by  him  and  but  little  improved  since  his  day. 
The  syllogism  reasons  from  the  general  to  the 
particular  and  has  about  sixteen  forms.  Its 
simplest  form  is  illustrated  as  follows : 


ARISTOTLE.  39 

Every  tyrant  is  a  bad  man ; 

This  man  is  a  tyrant, 

Therefore  he  is  a  bad  man. 

The  first  two  of  these  propositions  or  statements 
are  called  the  premises  (major  and  minor),  the 
third  the  conclusion.  The  accuracy  of  the  con- 
clusion depends  on  the  truth  of  the  two  premises. 

Aristotle  opposed  the  Platonic  doctrine  that 
ideas  have  objective  existence,  and  stated  that 
they  have  subjective  existence  only.  By  this  he 
meant  that  a  general  term,  such  as  man,  does  not 
represent  something  which  exists  apart  from  the 
individuals,  as  a  type  which  the  soul  has  seen  in 
its  past  existence  and  now  remembers,  but  is 
only  a  thought  in  the  mind.  He  proved  this  by 
pointing  out  that  the  individual  man  can  be 
placed  under  the  head  of  man,  animal,  biped,  and 
other  classifications,  and  there  must,  therefore, 
if  the  Platonic  theory  were  true,  be  types  for  each 
one  of  these.  The  result  would  obviously  be  a 
complete  confusion,  as  the  classifications  over- 
lapped one  another.  Aristotle  held  that  our 
knowledge  comes  primarily  from  sensation.  By 
comparing  present  sensations  with  the  memory 
of  past  sensations  we  obtain  ideas.  These  ideas 
are  the  result  of  the  rational  process  of  induc- 
tion, and  the  power  to  infer  them  is  the  power  of 
mind  which  we  call  reason,  a  power  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  intelligence  of  man  from  that  of 
brutes.  Art  consists  in  the  knowledge  of  these 
universal  truths,  whereas  experience  is  merely  a 
knowledge  of  particular  sensations  or  details. 
Aristotle  illustrates  this  by  saying  that  to  know 
that  a  particular  medicine  has  cured  certain  in- 
dividuals is  experience,  but  to  know  that  it  cures 
all  men  is  art. 


40  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

Aristotle  enumerated  ten  categories.  Cate- 
gories are  those  things  that  must  be  assumed  by 
the  thinker,  the  very  forms  or  framework  of 
thought.  They  are  data,  admitting  of  no  proof 
but  themselves,  and  of  no  disproof.  The  Aris- 
totelian categories  are:  "quantity,  quality,  rela- 
tion, action,  passion,  the  where,  the  when,  posi- 
tion in  space,  possession,  and  substance."  Aris- 
totle also  enumerated  five  predicables  or  things 
that  can  be  affirmed  concerning  any  object. 
They  are  genus,  species,  difference,  property,  and 
accident.  Thus  of  Socrates  we  might,  in  the 
above  order,  predicate  man  as  genus,  philosopher 
as  species,  moral  philosopher  as  difference,  ra- 
tionality as  property  or  essential  quality  of  the 
man,  and  Greek  as  one  of  the  accidental  or  non- 
essential  qualities. 

Though  essentially  an  empiric,  Aristotle  never- 
theless evolved  a  system  of  metaphysics.  He 
found  four  things  at  the  root  of  all  existence :  (i) 
the  material  cause,  or  essence ;  (2)  the  substantial 
cause,  or  substance ;  (3)  the  efficient  cause,  or 
motion ;  (4)  the  final  cause,  or  purpose.  He 
epitomized  the  world  as  a  trinity  of  finite  sub- 
stance, infinite  substance,  and  absolute  sub- 
stance or  God,  the  last  being  a  unity  embracing 
all  three. 

In  his  ethics  Aristotle  first  made  the  clear  dis- 
tinction of  the  will  from  the  intellect,  and  in  this 
definition  became  the  forerunner  of  the  Stoical 
movement.  He  placed  the  highest  pleasure  in  the 
exercise  of  the  reason.  Wisdom  lay  in  the  middle 
course,  the  so-called  golden  mean.  "Neither  too 
much  nor  too  little,"  was  the  law  of  conduct,  con- 
sidered as  a  branch  of  art. 

In  politics  Aristotle  preferred  a  wise  monarchy 


THE  STOICS.  41 

or  aristocracy.  He  objected  to  the  communism 
of  Plato.  He  was  very  conservative.  He  ap- 
proved of  slavery,  and  did  not  look  with  favor  on 
Plato's  programme  of  raising  the  standard  of 
women's  education.  To  this  extent,  however,  he 
was  merely  a  conformist  to  the  prevailing  opin- 
ions of  his  time.  He  has,  however,  much  to  say 
on  the  art  of  government  that  is  read  and  pon- 
dered by  statesmen  of  the  present  day. 

His  best-known  works  are  :  Topics,  Prior  An- 
alytics, Posterior  Analytics,  Rhetoric,  Nico- 
machean  Ethics,  Politics,  Poetry,  Researches 
About  Animals,  On  the  Heavens,  On  the  Soul, 
and  Metaphysics.  A  vast  number  of  works  have 
been  attributed  to  Aristotle,  many  of  which  are 
lost  and  many  spurious. 

THE   STOICS. 

During  the  two  centuries  immediately  preced- 
ing the  Christian  era,  Stoicism  was  the  most 
potent  and  influential  philosophy,  numbering 
among  its  adherents  principally  the  cultured, 
upon  whom  the  common  paganism  had  com- 
pletely lost  its  hold.  Like  many  of  the  Greek 
schools,  Stoicism  had  its  birth  in  a  Greek  colony. 
Though  a  product  of  the  Greek  intellect,  it  was 
less  Greek  in  its  spirit  than  any  philosophical 
system  that  had  preceded  it.  It,  no  doubt,  owed 
considerable  even  at  the  beginning  to  western  in- 
fluences, and  in  its  palmy  days  it  appealed  with 
more  force  to  the  grave  Roman  than  to  the  argu- 
mentative and  aesthetic  Greek. 

The  founder  of  the  school  was  Zeno  of  Citium 
(about  358 -about  260  B.  c.),  in  the  island  of 
Cyprus,  who  must  not  be  confounded  with  Zeno 


42  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

the  Eleatic.  Zeno  the  Stoic  was  the  son  of  a 
merchant  of  the  city  of  Citium.  His  father,  on 
returning  from  a  business  tour,  brought  Zeno 
some  works  of  the  Socratic  philosophers.  Zeno 
studied  them  with  avidity.  At  the  age  of  thirty 
he  went  to  Athens.  The  ship  on  which  he  sailed 
and  which  contained  all  he  possessed,  foundered. 
Reduced  to  poverty,  he  joined  the  ranks  of  the 
Cynics.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  philo- 
sophical preference  of  Diogenes  was  seeming- 
ly disposed  at  the  beginning  by  similar  mis- 
fortune. Zeno's  first  Cynical  instructor  was 
Crates.  It  is  related  that,  impecunious  and  dis- 
consolate, the  future  prophet  of  Stoicism  was 
one  day  walking  the  streets  of  Athens  when  he 
chanced  into  a  bookseller's  and  became  interest- 
ed in  one  of  the  then  numerous  works  of  the 
Cynics.  He  turned  to  the  bookseller  and  asked 
where  he  could  find  such  a  man  as  the  volume 
described.  The  bookseller  replied :  "There  goes 
one/'  pointing  to  Crates,  who  was  passing.  Thus 
Stoicism  had  its  birth  in  Cynicism.  But  it  soon 
outgrew  the  mean  limitations  of  the  parent  sys- 
tem. Zeno's  next  instructor  was  Stilpo,  of 
Megara.  Under  him  Zeno  acquired  skill  in  de- 
bate. He  studied  Plato,  and  finally  opened  his 
famous  school  at  the  "stoa,"  or  porch,  "the 
painted  corridor,"  as  some  call  it,  on  the  north 
side  of  the  market  place  at  Athens.  Hence  the 
name  of  "Stoic"  and  the  title  of  "philosophy  of 
the  porch."  Zeno  is  said  to  have  lived  mainly  on 
figs,  bread,  and  honey,  and  his  ninety-eight  years 
proved,  at  least,  the  comparatively  innocuous 
character  of  such  a  frugal  diet. 

The  preservative  strength  of  Stoicism,  like  that 
of  Cynicism,  lay  in  its  forcefulness  in  the  domain 


THE  STOICS.  43 

of  conduct.  Its  thoroughgoing  ethical  doctrines 
gave  the  stern  joy  and  satisfaction  to  the  doubter, 
and  the  fire  to  the  fanatic,  such  as  peculiarly 
suited  the  prevalent  appetite  for  reaction  against 
the  listless  insipidity  of  the  common  pagan  creed. 
Stoicism  was  an  orderly  system  appealing  with 
what  seemed  a  sweet  reasonableness  to  heads 
which  were  weaned  with  wasted  efforts  at  ration- 
alizing the  grotesque  or  scandalous  in  the  stones 
told  by  poets  about  gods  and  heroes.  Accord- 
ing to  the  Stoical  ethics,  manhood  is  virtue,  and 
the  summum  bonuni  is  therefore  not  pleasure  but 
virtue.  Activity  is  a  nobler  thing  than  contem- 
plation. Man  is  made  to  work,  not  to  speculate 
or  enjoy.  Pain  is  not  an  evil ;  pleasure  is  not  a 
good.  Critics  soon  pointed  out  that,  if  pain  be  not 
an  evil,  it  must  be  unnecessary  for  us  at  any  time 
to  avoid  it.  The  Stoics  made  some  sacrifice  of 
their  consistency  by  answering  that  any  one  is 
justified  in  avoiding  unnecessary  pain,  because, 
though  the  latter  be  not  an  evil,  it  is  nevertheless 
an  inconvenience.  Though  this  quibble  showed 
the  impossibility  of  establishing  an  absolute  dog- 
ma on  the  subject,  the  spirit  of  the  doctrine  was 
obviously  a  powerful  moral  tonic. 

The  Stoic  made  "reason/'  expressed  by  the 
Greek  word  "logos,"  the  law  for  mankind.  The 
logos  was  the  highest  thing  in  man  as  it  was  also 
supreme  above  fate  and  above  matter  in  the  uni- 
verse. It  was  the  ruling  power,  God.  "To  live 
conformably  to  reason"  became  the  comprehen- 
sive rule  for  all.  No  act  should  be  performed 
that  is  not  rational  or  sanctioned  by  reason.  An 
act  is  sinful  because  it  is  irrational.  Every  philo- 
sophical doctrine  has  been  carried  to  an  ex- 
treme for  the  benefit  of  both  its  adherents  and  its 


44  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

opponents.  Accordingly  we  find  one  of  the  later 
Stoics,  Persius,  saying  that  to  move  the  little 
finger  without  a  sufficient  reason  is  as  wicked  as 
to  commit  a  murder ;  the  wickedness  of  each  act 
was  thus  estimated  not  by  its  results  but  by  the 
general  fact  that  it  was  contrary  to  reason.  The 
doctrine  "to  Jive  conformably  to  reason"  was 
interpreted  by  the  Stoic  Cleanthes  as  "to  live 
conformably  to  universal  nature" ;  by  the  Stoic 
Chrysippus  as  "to  live  conformably  to  human 
nature." 

To  the  Stoic  the  only  worthy  pleasures  were 
intellectual  pleasures.  "Apathy,"  involving  the 
suppression  of  the  affections,  was  recom- 
mended. It  became  the  part  of  a  man  to  despise 
death  as  well  as  pain.  To  the  Stoic,  suicide 
seemed  a  legitimate  mode  of  putting  an  end  to  all 
suffering.  Many  notable  Stoics  died  by  their 
own  hands,  and  tradition  relates  that  even  the 
great  master,  Zeno,  voluntarily  gave  up  the 
struggle.  It  is  said  that  as  he  was  passing  down 
the  steps  leading  from  his  celebrated  "porch,"  he 
fell  and  broke  his  little  finger.  Accepting  this 
accident  as  a  proof  that  his  days  of  capability 
were  over,  he  went  home  and  strangled  himself. 
Yet  Stoicism  would  not  admit  the  charge  that 
it  was  a  gloomy  or  pessimistic  philosophy.  It 
was  a  system  for  this  life  only.  It  recognized  a 
providential  fate,  but  its  great  moral  potency 
and  practical  value  lay  in  the  emphasis  it  laid  on 
the  human  will  and  its  right  expression  in  the 
reason  or  "logos."  A  tribute  to  the  Stoic  "logos" 
is  discovered  by  some  in  the  first  chapter  of  the 
Gospel  of  St.  John,  where  it  is  translated  by 
"Word"  and  identified  with  Christ. 

Stoicism  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  had  a 


THE  STOICS.  45 

metaphysic,  because  it  adopted  the  strictly  ma- 
terialistic view  of  nature,  and  the  since-called 
common  sense  interpretation  of  the  sensations, 
to  which,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Cynics  first  gave 
prominence.  Stoicism,  however,  was  the  first 
system  to  bring  into  the  foreground  the  cate- 
gory of  cause  and  effect.  It  also  established 
force  as  a  primary  thing  to  be  distinguished  from 
matter,  yet  coextensive  with  it.  Those  sensations, 
such  as  sound,  light,  and  heat,  which  are  now 
explained  on  the  undulatory  or  wave  theory, 
were  explained  by  Stoicism  on  the  theory  of  air 
currents  at  different  degrees  of  tension.  To  be 
consistent  in  their  materialism,  the  Stoics  were 
wont  to  explain  even  reason  itself  as  other  than  a 
spiritual  principle,  as  a  "pneuma,"  which  is  a 
current  of  air  or  gas.  Everything  was  at  one 
time  this  gas,  will  again  become  so,  and  will  re- 
peat the  work  of  creation  by  condensation,  and  of 
dissolution  by  rarefaction.  The  soul  of  man  is 
also  of  this  gas.  It  holds  the  body  together,  and, 
if  it  can  hold  together  its  own  atoms  after  it 
leaves  the  body  until  it  reaches  the  upper  ethereal 
regions,  it  may  prolong  its  existence  for  a  period. 
Whether  all  souls,  or  only  those  of  great  men, 
could  accomplish  this,  was  a  moot  point.  The 
destiny  of  all  was  absorption  in  the  general 
"pneuma"  of  the  world.  Time  and  space  were 
something,  but  as  nothing  real  or  external  cor- 
responded to  them,  they  could  not  be  said  to 
exist.  On  such  subjects  as  these  the  Stoic  ma- 
terialism necessarily  broke  down  into  inconsis- 
tencies. In  the  Stoic  cosmogony  or  theory  of 
world  origin,  pneuma  is  the  first  cause  of  all. 
This  pneuma  or  expanded  gas  is  a  conception 


46  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

intended  to  provide  for  a  thoroughgoing  ma- 
terialism ;  but,  as  the  extreme  of  materialism 
easily  passes  into  the  extreme  of  idealism,  which 
is  the  negation  of  all  matter  in  favor  of  spirit,  it 
would  be  very  easy  to  misinterpret  this  funda- 
mental assumption  of  Stoicism  as  a  spiritual 
principle,  and  such  misinterpretation  must  be 
guarded  against. 

In  Stoicism  we  discern  the  gathering  of  many 
of  the  fruits  of  the  earlier  philosophies  of  the 
Greeks.  Its  God,  though  conceived  as  material, 
is  none  the  less  rational,  and  to  be  worshiped, 
not  by  images  but  in  the  shrine  of  the  heart. 
Stoicism  called  upon  man  to  be  perfect,  to  seek 
virtue  first,  and,  in  seeking  it,  to  scorn  alike 
pleasure  and  pain,  to  regard  the  development  of 
one's  being,  by  conforming  it  to  reason  and  the 
moral  law,  as  the  object  towards  which  each 
should  strive.  Stoicism,  while  seldom  original 
but  rather  eclectic  in  its  great  doctrines,  per- 
vaded the  thought  of  the  teachers  of  mankind 
during  the  age  in  which  Christianity  arose,  and 
made  its  influence  still  felt  centuries  after  the 
latter  had  displaced  its  authority.  In  its  roll  of 
great  names  are  Seneca,  Cornutus,  Persius, 
Lucan,  Epictetus,  and  Marcus  Aurelius,  each  of 
whom  left  writings  which  still  survive.  Cato  and 
Brutus  are  also  Stoic  Romans  who  stood  high 
in  the  estimation  of  their  countrymen.  Cicero 
might  almost  be  classed  with  them,  though  he 
preferred  to  be  numbered  with  the  Eclectics,  or 
those  who  freely  choose  from  among  the  different 
systems.  The  Eclectic  wave  affected  all  the 
Greek  schools  in  the  century  immediately  pre- 
ceding the  Christian  era. 


ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY.  47 

THE  NEOPLATONISTS  AND  THE  GNOSTICS. 

Neoplatonism  may  be  said  to  represent  the  last 
stage  of  Greek  philosophy,  after  which  discus- 
sions of  the  truths  of  the  Christian  religion  en- 
gaged for  several  centuries  the  entire  attention 
of  the  world's  thinkers.  Neoplatonism  is  one  of 
the  skeptical  schools  in  that  it  doubts  the  reli- 
ability of  the  knowledge  we  acquire  from  ex- 
perience. It  goes  back  to  metaphysics  and,  with 
Plato,  regards  the  general  ideas  as  the  only  reali- 
ties. It  adopted  the  Stoic  morality.  It  has  often 
been  regarded  as  a  gathering  together  and  sum- 
ming up  of  the  earlier  philosophical  systems. 
However,  it  introduced  the  new  principle  of  the 
supra-rational,  affirming  that  the  highest  truth 
lies  beyond  reason,  in  divine  communications 
or  revelations.  It  found  these  revelations  in  the 
religious  traditions  and  rites  of  all  nations:  The 
older  the  revelation  the  better.  Neoplatonism 
has  thus  been  described  as  religious  in  its  tend- 
ency. It  interpreted  myths  allegorically.  It 
claimed  to  be  the  absolute  religion.  It  contem- 
plated restoring  all  the  religions  of  antiquity, 
making  each  a  vehicle  for  its  religious  teaching. 
It  regarded  every  ritual  as  a  means  of  helping 
morality  upward.  Over  all  the  demiurges  (cre- 
ators) it  discerned  one  ineffable  God. 

The  most  notable  exponent  of  Neoplatonism 
was  Plotinus  (205  -  270  A.  D.),  a  native  of  Egypt, 
who  resided  in  Rome  during  his  maturity.  His 
writings  were  arranged  by  his  pupil,  Porphyry, 
and  published  in  six  "Enneads."  In  these  his 
philosophy  shows  a  strongly  religious  trend.  His 
positive  teaching  embraces  an  ascetic  morality, 
designed  to  lead  the  human  soul,  degraded  by 


48  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

corporeality,  up  to  see  God  and  become  one  with 
Him.  Porphyry,  in  his  own  book,  coupled  with 
essentially  the  same  doctrines  as  his  master's 
such  bitter  attacks  on  the  Christianity  of  his  day 
that  the  book  was  destroyed. 

Neoplatonism  left  its  impress  on  the  later 
teachers  who  belong  to  its  completely  successful 
rival  for  supremacy  in  the  religious  world,  Chris- 
tianity. Augustine,  one  of  the  greatest  doctors  of 
the  church,  records  in  the  seventh  book  of  his 
"  Confessions"  how  much  he  owed  to  the  perusal 
of  Neoplatonic  works. 

Gnosticism  is  a  general  name  given  in  the 
beginning  of  the  second  century  to  various 
heresies  that  existed  about  that  time  and  drew 
more  or  less  from  Christianity  without  accepting 
the  standard  Christian  creed.  It  consisted  in 
some  cases  of  Hellenism,  in  others  of  Judaism,  of 
the  old  Persian  or  Zarathustrian  religion,  or  of 
Buddhism,  reenforced  with  the  idea  of  redemp- 
tion borrowed  from  Christianity.  Hellenic  Gnos- 
ticism had  a  distinguished  exponent  in  Philo, 
who  is  sometimes  called  a  theosophist.  He  inter- 
mingled Platonic  and  Old  Testament  ideas. 


PART  II. 

MEDIAEVAL   PHILOSOPHY. 

THE   FATHERS. 

From  the  second  century  to  the  seventh  cen- 
tury of  our  era,  particularly  after  the  decay  of 
Neoplatonism,  human  philosophy  gave  up  its 
role  to  theology,,  which  latter  was  studied  and 
expounded  almost  solely  by  the  great  logicians 
within  the  pale  of  the  church.  These  thinkers 
have  ever  since  been  called  the  Fathers,  a  term 
generally  held  to  imply  soundness  of  doctrine, 
holiness  of  life,  the  approval  of  the  church,  and 
undoubted  antiquity.  They  are  divided  chrono- 
logically into  three  groups :  (i)  the  Apostolic 
Fathers,  (2)  the  Primitive  Fathers,  and  (3)  the 
Post-Nicene  Fathers.  The  Apostolic  Fathers,  or 
those  who  were  to  some  extent  contemporary 
with  the  apostles,  are  Clement  of  Rome,  Ignatius, 
Polycarp,  the  unknown  author  of  "The  Shepherd 
of  Hermas,"  and  the  unknown  author  of  "The 
Epistle  of  Barnabas."  The  chief  Primitive  or 
Ante-Nicene  Fathers  are  Irenaeus,  Justin 
Martyr,  Origen,  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Cyp- 
rian, Tertullian/  and  Gregory  Thaumaturgus. 
The  Post-Nicene  Fathers  include  among  others : 
Ambrose,  Athanasius,  Augustine,  Basil,  Chrys- 
ostom,  Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  Cyril  of  Alexandria, 
^piphanius,  Gregory  of  Nazianzus,  Gregory 
of  Nyssa,  Gregory  the  Great,  Hilary,  Jerome, 
and  Leo. 

The  study  of  the  Fathers  is  sometimes  called 
patrology  or  patristic.  Of  the  individuals  above 

49 


50  MEDIEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

mentioned,  Ambrose,  Augustine,  Jerome,  and 
Gregory  the  Great — again  naming  them  in  the 
order  of  time — are  called  the  four  great  Fathers. 
Augustine  is  admitted  to  be  the  greatest  of  the 
four,  and  therefore  the  greatest  of  all  the  Fathers. 
It  is  said  of  him  that  no  single  name  was  ever 
such  a  power  in  the  Christian  church,  and  no  one 
mind  ever  so  impressed  Christian  thought. 

Aurelius  Augustinus  (354  -  430  A.  D.),  called 
St.  Augustine — but  who  must  not  be  confounded 
with  the  English  St.  Augustine  or  St.  Austin 
who  lived  two  centuries  later — was  a  native  of 
Numidia  in  Africa,  son  of  a  pagan  burgess.  His 
mother  was  a  pious  Christian,  who  did  much 
to  bring  ultimately  both  husband  and  son  into 
the  Christian  fold.  In  early  life  he  betrayed  an 
impulsive  and  sensual  but  studious  disposition. 
He  had  a  son,  whom,  in  a  fit  of  pious  emotion, 
he  named  Adeodatus  (the  God-given).  He 
studied  at  Madaura  and  Carthage,  devoting  him- 
self especially  to  the  Latin  poets.  There  he 
divided  his  time  mainly  between  study  and  the 
theater,  of  whose  spectacles  he  was  passionately 
fond.  He  was  evidently  not  a  Christian  at  this 
period.  Habitual  absence  from  the  theater,  with 
its  idolatrous  rites,  lascivious  portrayals,  and 
gladiatorial  shows,  was  then  a  mark  of  a  Chris- 
tian. In  after  life  Augustine  was  very  emphatically 
opposed  to  the  theater.  His  aim  in  studying  ap- 
pears to  have  been  to  qualify  himself  for  the 
lucrative  calling  of  a  rhetorician,  in  accordance 
with  the  desires  of  his  father.  He  wrote  in  Latin 
but  seems  to  have  known  little  Greek  and  no 
Hebrew.  Augustine's  speculative  powers  were 
first  awakened  by  reading  Cicero's  "Hortensius," 
in  his  nineteenth  year.  He  studied  philosophy, 


THE  ARABIAN  PHILOSOPHERS.  $1 

and  became  a  Manichaean.  Manichseanism  was 
a  religion  which  upheld  as  its  prophet  and 
founder  a  certain  miracle-working  and  preaching 
individual  called  Mani,  said  to  have  lived  in  the 
third  century,  but  by  some  believed  to  be  a 
creation  of  the  imagination.  Augustine  went  to 
Rome  and  engaged  in  his  profession  of  teacher, 
thence  to  Milan,  where  at  the  age  of  thirty-two 
he  was  converted  to  Christianity  by  the  preach- 
ing of  St.  Ambrose.  In  his  "Confessions"  he 
tells  the  whole  story.  He  immediately  stopped 
profane  swearing  and  in  other  ways  disciplined 
his  character.  He  and  his  son  were  baptized. 
His  mother  joined  them  and  was  very  happy. 
He  retired  to  his  native  city  and  formed  a  small 
communistic  religious  community.  Some  years 
later  he  was  elected  Bishop  of  Hippo.  The 
"Confessions,"  the  most  notable  of  his  numerous 
works,  was  written  after  he  became  bishop.  His 
system  belongs  almost  entirely  to  the  domain  of 
theology,  but  his  great  ability  as  a  thinker  on 
moral  questions  and  interpreter  of  revelation 
commands  for  him,  even  more  than  for  his 
brother  theologians,  a  place  in  the  history  also 
of  human  philosophy. 

THE  ARABIAN   PHILOSOPHERS. 

The  period  from  the  ninth  till  the  close  of  the 
twelfth  century,  in  reference  to  philosophy,  has 
been  called  by  some  the  period  of  the  "Flight 
into  Egypt."  The  most  intellectual  of  the  fol- 
lowers of  Islam  then  showed  a  deep  interest  in 
the  Greek  philosophers,  an  interest  which  did 
much  to  restore  the  study  of  the  latter  in  Europe 
and  was  th'e  forerunner  and  in  a  large  measure 


$2  MEDIEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

the  cause  of  the  Renaissance,  the  great  revival  of 
Greek  learning  that  took  place  in  the  thirteenth 
century.  The  so-called  Arabian  philosophers, 
comprising  Persian  and  Moorish  as  well  as 
Arabian  teachers,  rediscovered  Aristotle,  though 
in  a  very  remote  and  dubious  way.  They  were 
probably  all  in  the  predicament  of  Averroes,  who, 
it  is  said,  had  to  derive  his  Aristotle  from  an 
Arabic  rendering  of  a  Syriac  translation  of  the 
Greek  text.  This,  however,  seemed  no  insuper- 
able impediment  to  a  class  of  philosophers  who 
found  it  possible  to  be  mostly  physicians  though 
their  Mohammedanism  closed  to  them  the  study 
of  anatomy  by  proscribing  dissection.  Indeed, 
Averroes  and  others  were  wont  to  quote  Aristotle 
even  in  physics  and  anatomy  as  a  more  reliable 
authority  than  Galen.1  The  Arabians,  however, 
pursued  the  proper  method  in  the  study  of  mathe- 
matics, astronomy,  and  chemistry.  They  sur- 
passed the  occidentals  in  these  sciences,  in  which 
there  is  still  notable  evidence  of  assistance  ren- 
dered by  them  to  the  advantage  of  the  world's 
knowledge.  The  Arabian  philosophers  passed 
to  their  philosophy  generally  from  a  severe  train- 
ing in  these  branches. 

There  were  Al  Kendi,  a  Persian,  in  the  ninth 
century;  Al  Farabi,  a  Syrian,  in  the  tenth  cen- 
tury; Avicenna  and  Algazzali,  Persians,  in  the 
eleventh  century,  and  Abubacer  and  Averroes,  of 
Moslem  Spain,  in  the  twelfth  century.  Passing 
over  Avicenna,  whose  fame  rests  more  on  his 
medical  canon  than  on  his  philosophical  works, 
Algazzali  is  the  most  interesting  personality,  and 

1  Galen  was  a  celebrated  Greek  physician  who  lived 
in  the  second  century  A.  D. 


THE  ARABIAN  PHILOSOPHERS.  53 

Averroes  the  ablest  and  most  famous  teacher  of 
the  Arabian  school. 

Algazzali  has  been  called  "The  Light  of 
Islam,"  "The  Pillar  of  the  Mosque."  Left  early 
an  orphan,  he  was  confided  to  the  care  of  a 
"sufi"  or  mystic.  He  finished  his  studies  and 
became  a  successful  professor.  One  day,  while 
lecturing  to  his  class,  he  was  stricken  dumb.  He 
interpreted  this  calamity  in  a  superstitious  way, 
and  gave  himself  up  to  asceticism.  He  started 
out  to  prove  everything,  but,  finding  that  im- 
possible, he  came  to  regard  life  as  a  dream,  and 
took  refuge  from  skepticism  in  faith.  He  taught 
the  desirability  of  attaining  the  ecstatic  state  and 
ultimate  absorption  in  God  by  means  of  prayer 
and  the  practice  of  ascetic  virtue. 

The  life  of  Averroes,  like  that  of  the  Arabian 
philosophers  generally,  was  troublous  and  per- 
secuted. After  acquiring  the  best  education 
afforded  by  the  Moslem  schools,  he  became  an 
attache  of  the  court  of  the  Caliph  of  Moslem 
Spain.  He  discussed  philosophy  in  its  bearings 
on  Islam,  delighting  the  caliph  and  the  wits,  but 
earning  the  distrust  and  the  opprobrium  of  the 
masses,  who  regarded  a  speculator  in  philosophy 
with  the  suspicion  of  being  an  infidel.  His 
opponents  succeeded  in  having  him  banished. 
He  was  again  restored  to  favor  and  honor  but 
died  soon  thereafter.  He  left  several  sons  who 
rose  in  the  service  of  their  country. 

Averroes  regarded  the  works  of  Aristotle  as 
almost  revelations.  His  commentaries,  translated 
into  Latin,  opened  the  eyes  of  the  Christian 
schoolmen,  to  whom,  whether  clergy  or  lay, 
Greek  had  long  been  a  dead  tongue  and  the 
riches  of  Greek  philosophy  and  poetry  a  thing 


54  MEDIJEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

unknown.  The  teachings  of  Aristotle,  no  doubt, 
underwent  unwitting  modification  as  they 
emerged  in  the  volumes  of  Averroes.  The  scien- 
tific spirit  of  the  Greek  master  was,  however,  still 
present,  and  nothing  was  more  needed  by  the 
thought  of  the  age. 

Averroes,  who  had  learned  caution  from  the 
rudeness  of  his  ignorant  countrymen  as  often 
displayed  toward  himself,  advised  that  intellectual 
activity  and  scientific  truth  would  better  be  con- 
fined to  the  class  capable  of  enjoying  them  with- 
out abuse.  Later  writers  had  great  respect  for 
Averroes,  Roger  Bacon  even  placing  him  beside 
Aristotle  and  recommending  the  study  of  Arabic 
in  order  to  attain  a  mastery  of  his  works. 

THE   SCHOOLMEN. 

And  now  comes  what  has  been  called  "the 
Great  Controversy,"  which  occupied  the  subtlest 
minds  for  five  centuries.  From  the  ninth  to  the 
fourteenth  century  Scholasticism  reigned  su- 
preme. There  never  has  been  a  more  prolonged 
dispute  over  a  single  question,  but  its  especial 
earnestness  and  length  were  no  doubt  due  to  the 
fact  that  it  early  became  identified  in  the  minds 
of  many  with  the  more  serious  doctrines  of 
theology,  in  particular  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 
The  deductions  of  certain  heretical  philosophers, 
such  as  Roscellinus,  rather  than  the  inherent 
tendencies  of  the  two  opposing  opinions  of  the 
Schoolmen,  were  responsible  for  this  identifica- 
tion. 

The  Schoolmen  or  Scholastics,  so  called  from 
the  fact  that  they  were  mostly  associated  with  the 
schools  established  by  Charlemagne,  the  King 


THE  SCHOOLMEN.  55 

of  the  Franks  and  Emperor  of  the  Romans,  in 
the  eighth  century,  took  opposite  sides  as  nomi- 
nalists and  realists.  The  nominalist  said  that  a 
general  term  is  but  a  name ;  the  realist  held  that 
it  represents  a  real  thing.  The  question  was 
obviously  a  revival  of  the  old  one  originated  by 
Plato  in  his  theory  of  ideas.  This  renewal  of  an 
old  controversy  was  occasioned  by  the  publica- 
tion of  a  Latin  version  of  Aristotle's  "Categories" 
together  with  a  Latin  version  of  the  introduction 
that  had  been  written  by  Porphyry.  This  kindled 
anew  the  old  Greek  controversy  in  a  world  which 
knew  not  Greek,  showing  the  natural  tendency  of 
the  human  mind  to  struggle  with  the  same  puz- 
zles and  perceive  the  same  difficulties,  whatever 
the  age  or  the  language. 

The  Scholastic  list  opens  with  Scotus  Erigena, 
also  called  John  the  Scot,  who  lived  in  the  ninth 
century.  He  was  a  native  of  the  British  Isles, 
probably  studied  in  the  schools  of  Ireland,  but 
does  not  appear  to  have  taken  holy  orders.  He 
was  invited  by  Charles  the  Bald,  the  King  of 
France  and  Emperor  of  the  Romans,  to  his  court 
in  France,  and  was  appointed  head  of  the  court 
school.  He  forms  an  exception  to  other  Scho- 
lastics in  his  knowledge  of  Greek.  Many  works 
of  a  theological  nature  by  his  pen  have  come 
down  to  us,,  showing  his  superior  powers  as 
scholar  and  mystic  philosopher.  He  was  the 
first  of  the  realists,  though  the  question  did  not 
reach  its  monopolizing  condition  till  after  his 
day. 

Roscellinus,  the  first  great  nominalist,  a  native 
of  lower  Brittany,  was  born  about  the  middle  of 
the  eleventh  century.  He  appears  to  have  writ- 
ten nothing,  and  is  chiefly  interesting  on  account 


56  MEDIAEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

of  the  vigorous  opposition  which  his  thorough- 
going and  extreme  nominalism  and  tritheism 
stirred  up.  He  awoke  Anselm,  of  Canterbury,  to 
undertake  the  energetic  defense  of  realism,  just 
as,  at  a  later  date,  Hume  awakened  Kant.  The 
opinions  of  Roscellinus  were  condemned  by  two 
ecclesiastical  councils  and  he  fled  from  France  to 
England  to  escape  the  wrath  of  the  orthodox 
populace.  He  later  returned  to  France  and 
taught  at  Tours,  where  he  had  Abelard  as  a 
pupil. 

Abelard,  who  may  be  said  to  have  overthrown 
the  realism  then  dominant,  while  yet  adopting  a 
middle  course  between  extreme  nominalism  and 
extreme  realism,  is  remembered  as  one  of  the 
ablest  of  debaters,  and  also  for  the  dark  passage 
in  his  life  which  links  his  name  with  Heloise. 
He  betrayed  this  young  maiden,  who  was  for  a 
time  his  private  pupil.  She  was  nineteen  years 
of  age,  twenty-two  years  his  junior,  remarkably 
learned  as  well  as  beautiful,  but  her  disinterested 
devotion  thereafter  to  the  ambitious  and  vain 
Abelard,  her  refusal  to  marry  him  at  first  lest  it 
should  prevent  his  promotion  in  the  church,  her 
denial  of  a  later  secret  marriage  for  the  same 
reason,  and  her  taking  of  the  veil  in  order  to  seal 
her  fidelity  and  appease  his  jealousy  after  his 
being  mutilated  by  her  uncle,  constitute  the  most 
thrilling  chapter  of  weakness  and  constancy. 
Abelard  became  a  monk.  In  the  well-known 
tomb  at  Pere-Lachaise,  still  visited  by  the  curi- 
ous, the  bones  of  the  pair  now  rest  together. 

Abelard  combined  the  instruction  of  both  his 
masters,  the  extreme  nominalist  Roscellinus,  and 
the  extreme  realist  William  of  Champeaux.  The 
latter,  who  was  his  second  teacher,  he  confuted 


THE  SCHOOLMEN.  '  $7 

in  the  great  cathedral  school  of  Notre  Dame, 
winning  his  first  great  triumph  as  a  dialectician. 
Abelard's  influence  was  great  in  his  own  day, 
and  two  or  three  treatises  from  his  pen  still  re- 
main, but  it  is  probably  the  thrilling  current  in 
his  life's  history  above  referred  to  that  has  done 
most  to  keep  alive  the  remembrance  of  this  im- 
petuous Schoolman.  With  a  frankness,  passing 
frequently  into  boldness,  he  tells  the  story  of  his 
life  in  a  book  entitled  the  "History  of  My  Calami- 
ties." 

In  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century,  real- 
ism was  the  dominant  doctrine  and  the  doctrine 
of  the  church,  but  in  the  thirteenth  century  a 
middle-course  doctrine,  or  what  has  been  de- 
scribed as  a  moderate  Aristotelian  realism,  be- 
came the  opinion  sanctioned  by  authority.  In 
connection  with  this  change  we  associate  the 
name  of  the  learned  German  professor,  Albertus 
Magnus,  or  Albert  the  Great,  who  has  left  volu- 
minous works,  but  still  more  his  illustrious  pupil, 
Thomas  Aquinas,  since  canonized  and  accredited 
as  the  philosopher  of  the  church. 

Thomas  of  Aquin  (1227-1274)  was  the  son 
of  a  count,  in  the  territories  of  Naples.  After 
finishing  his  studies  at  the  University  of  Naples, 
in  place  of  entering  upon  a  life  of  luxury  in  his 
father's  castle,  and  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of 
his  family,  he  became  a  monk  of  St.  Dominic. 
He  was  then  scarcely  seventeen  years  of  age.  He 
attended  the  lectures  of  Albertus  Magnus  in 
Cologne,  afterwards  following  him  to  Paris  and 
becoming  his  associate  there  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
one.  He  became  an  indefatigable  writer  as  well 
as  worker  for  his  order,  traveled  on  long 
journeys,  and  was  consulted  by  the  Pope.  He 


$S  MEDIEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

became  professor  at  Naples,  but  refused  to  be 
archbishop.  His  great  work  is  the  "Summa 
Theologiae,"  which  was  meant  to  be  the  sum  of 
all  known  learning.  He  is  sometimes  called 
"The  Angelic  Doctor,"  on  account  of  the  fact 
that  he  wrote  a  treatise  "On  Angels." 

The  followers  of  Aquinas  were  called  the 
Thomists  in  contradistinction  to  the  Scotists  or 
followers  of  Duns  Scotus,  the  English  phi- 
losopher, called  by  his  contemporaries  "The 
Subtle  Doctor."  The  Thomists  held  that  reason 
and  faith  are  in  harmony,  but  the  Scotists 
doubted  the  power  of  reason  and  held  that  there 
is  an  apparent  lack  of  harmony  as  a  result  of  that 
lack  of  power. 

Next  came  the  so-called  "Invincible  Doctor," 
William  of  Occam,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  an 
Englishman  and  a  pupil  of  Duns  Scotus.  He 
was  a  nominalist,  and  separated  philosophy  and 
reason  from  religion  and  faith.  His  treatises 
were  put  under  the  ban  by  the  University  of 
Paris.  His  doctrines,  however,  spread,  and  the 
destructive  criticism  by  himself  and  his  followers 
may  be  said  to  mark  the  close  of  the  great  Scho- 
lastic controversy.  All  had  been  said  that  could 
be  said  on  that  point,  and  said  again. 

ROGER  BACON. 

Roger  Bacon  (1214-1294),  whose  long  life 
covers  approximately  the  thirteenth  century,  was 
a  notable  exception  to  the  thinkers  of  that  epoch. 
He  cannot  be  classed  with  the  Schoolmen,  and 
many  discern  in  his  works  the  beginnings  of 
modern  science.  Born  near  Ilchester,  in  Somer- 
set, England,  Roger  Bacon  was  educated  at  the 


ROGER  BACON.  59 

Universities  of  Oxford  and  Paris.  At  the  latter 
he  met  the  great  fame  of  Albertus  Magnus  and 
Aquinas,  and  it  displeased  him  to  hear  from  their 
coterie  that  philosophy  was  now  complete.  He 
was  particularly  incensed  to  find  physical  sci- 
ence cultivated  not  by  experiment  as  Aristotle 
taught  it  should,  but  by  arguments  deduced  from 
premises  resting  on  authority.  He  plunged  him- 
self all  the  more  deeply  into  mathematics, 
languages,  and  experimental  research.  Having 
earned  the  degree  of  "Doctor  of  Theology/'  and 
been  dubbed  by  his  admirers  "The  Wonderful 
Doctor/'  he  returned  to  Oxford,  only  to  find  his 
lectures  interdicted  by  Bonaventura,  the  general 
of  the  Franciscan  order,  to  which  Bacon  be- 
longed. Bonaventura  commanded  him  to  return 
to  Paris  forthwith.  He  obeyed,  and  for  ten  years 
suffered  penance  and  had  to  refrain  from  writing 
anything  for  publication.  Then  came  the  friend- 
-ly  command  from  Pope  Clement  IV.,  to  furnish 
him  with  a  treatise  on  the  sciences.  Much  of 
what  he  wrote  had  been  burned  by  the  authori- 
ties, but  now  there  was  protection.  The  colossal 
labor  which  he  performed  in  order  to  fulfill  that 
command  within  eighteen  months,  places  his 
three  books,  the  "Opus  Majus,"  the  "Opus 
Minus"  and  the  "Opus  Tertium,"  among  the 
curiosities  of  literature.  He  was  fifty-four  when 
by  the  influence  of  Clement  he  returned  to  Ox- 
ford again  in  good  standing.  He  was  only  three 
years  there,  however,  when  the  publication  of 
the  first  part  of  his  "Compendium  of  Philosophy" 
threw  him  into  deeper  trouble  than  ever  on  ac- 
count of  the  outspoken  way  in  which  he  rebuked 
the  clergy  and  monks  for  their  faults  and  lack  of 
knowledge.  The  result  was  that  he  was  cast  into 


6o  MEDIAEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

prison,  where  he  languished  for'  the  next  four- 
teen years.  He  died  about  two  years  after  re- 
gaining his  liberty. 

Roger  Bacon  held  mathematics — which  was 
discredited  by  his  contemporaries — to  be  the 
basis  of  all  the  sciences.  He  said  we  have  three 
means  of  knowledge :  authority,  reasoning,  and 
experiment.  He  regarded  authority  as  of  no 
value  without  reason.  From  this  he  excepted 
the  authority  of  Scripture  and  the  Fathers.  He 
held  that  such  authority  calls  for  assent,  but  must 
be  kept  separate  from  human  inquiry.  Experi- 
ment verifies  reason.  His  "Opus,"  as  usually 
published,  deals  with  philosophy  and  theology, 
grammar,  mathematics,  optics,  and  experimental 
science.  It  also  contained  a  part  on  morals. 
Roger  Bacon's  great  service  was  to  the  cause  of 
science,  then  in  an  unpromising  condition. 

BRUNO. 

Giordano  Bruno  (1550-1600)  is  the  most 
famous  of  the  Italian  philosophers  of  the  period 
of  the  Renaissance.  He  had  a  wandering  and 
exciting  life  which  terminated  at  the  stake  in 
Rome,  when  he  was  about  fifty  years  old.  This 
philosophical  and  religious  insurgent  was  vain, 
mercurial,  and  impulsive.  It  was  probably  his 
impressionableness  that  made  him  enter  the 
order  of  the  Dominicans,  at  the  age  of  fifteen. 
Impatience  of  authority  soon  made  him  throw  off 
their  discipline.  Branded  a  heretic,  he  endured 
hardship  at  Rome  for  many  years,  and,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-eight,  he  had  to  flee.  He  visited  the 
principal  cities  of  France  and  lectured  so  well  on 
astronomy  and  other  subjects,  that  he  received  a 


BRUNO.  6* 

call  to  the  chair  of  philosophy  in  Paris.  There 
was  one  condition,  however,  to  which  Bruno 
could  not  submit.  He  would  have  to  receive  the 
mass.  The  offer  must  have  been  tempting  to  the 
vagrant  philosopher,  but  it  was  promptly  set 
aside  by  him.  He  proceeded  to  Paris,  however, 
in  his  capacity  of  itinerant  lecturer,  and  when  he 
was  about  thirty  -  three  we  find  him  in  England. 
There  he  wrote  his  most  important  books.  All 
of  these  are  in  Italian.  The  best-known  is  "The 
Expulsion  of  the  Triumphant  Beast,"  wherein  a 
form  of  pantheism  is  taught,  alongside  of  a  ribald 
criticism  of  established  forms.  He  continued 
lecturing  and  writing  in  this  strain,  journeyed  on 
the  continent,  and  at  last  rashly  ventured  into 
Italy.  He  was  thrown  into  prison  by  order  of 
the  Inquisition  and,  after  seven  years'  confine- 
ment, was  excommunicated  and  executed. 

Bruno  is  the  forerunner,  and,  as  generally  be- 
lieved, the  inspirer  of  Spinoza,  the  pantheist, 
though  that  writer  nowhere  mentions  his  name. 
He  is  also  credited  with  being  the  first  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  modern  theory  of  evolution.  He 
was  an  ardent  advocate  of  the  Copernican  system 
in  astronomy.  In  an  age  when  people  still  be- 
lieved the  world  to  be  flat,  he  stoutly  debated  with 
the  Oxford  professors  and  others  that  it  is  round. 
He  held  that  the  solar  system  is  one  of  an  infinity 
of  similar  systems.  He  made  the  new  doctrine 
of  Copernicus  the  basis  of  everything  in  phi- 
losophy, much  as  modern  evolutionists  now  treat 
the  principle  of  evolution.  The  world  to  Bruno 
was  the  evolution  of  the  world  spirit  according 
to  the  plastic  substratum  or  matter,  which  is  but 
one  of  the  phases  of  that  spirit.  Matter  is  made 
up  of  minima  or  monads,  which  at  one  time  form 


62  MEDIAEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

a  stone,  at  another  a  plant,  at  another  an  aninial. 
These  monads  are  spherical  and  essentially  the 
same  in  all  these  objects.  Still  Bruno  shrinks 
from  the  mechanical  theory  which  would  seem 
to  most  minds  to  be  an  alternative  statement. 


CAMPANELLA. 

Contemporary  with  Bruno,  but  a  little 
younger,  we  have  another  noted  Italian  philoso- 
pher, Tomaso  Campanella,  who  also  started  at 
fifteen  as  a  Dominican  monk.  Though  profess- 
ing in  religion  complete  submission  to  the  es- 
tablished faith  of  Rome,  he  was  in  philosophy  an 
insurgent  of  the  most  radical  type.  His  theory 
of  the  world  was  pantheistic,  and  of  the  state,  as 
sketched  in  an  allegory,  communistic.  He  passed 
thirty  years  of  the  prime  of  his  life  in  prison  on 
account  of  his  boldness  of  thought. 


PART  III. 


MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

FRANCIS  BACON. 

Francis  Bacon  (1561  -  1626)  had  the  titles  of 
Baron  Verulam  and  Viscount  St.  Albans,  but, 
contrary  to  common  custom,  these  names  are 
never  used  in  denominating  the  distinguished 
philosopher.  His  family  name  early  became  his 
nom  de  plume,  and  the  one  which  was  to  live  in 
history.  His  father,  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon,  was  a 
famous  statesman  and  lawyer,  lord  keeper  of  the 
great  seal  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
Francis,  no  doubt,  inherited  much  of  his  wisdom 
and  eloquence  also  from  his  mother,  who  sprang 
from  a  race  of  scholars  and  was  herself  a  woman 
of  classical  culture.  This  youngest  son  of  the 
high  officer  of  state  is  said  to  have  shown,  when 
a  boy,  a  precocious  wisdom  so  that  even  Eliza- 
beth delighted  to  question  him,  and,  in  compli- 
ment for  his  grave  and  mature  answers,  called 
him  her  "young  lord  keeper." 

Francis  Bacon  received  his  academic  educa- 
tion at  Cambridge  University  and  came  away 
from  there  dissatisfied  with  the  science  of  the 
day  both  in  its  methods  and  in  its  results.  He 
thereafter  traveled  on  the  continent.  He  was 
eighteen  years  old  when  his  father  died,  and  he 
had  at  once  to  leave  off  foreign  travel  and  adopt 
a  profession  in  order  to  earn  a  living.  He  chose 
the  law.  Conscious  of  power  and  great  in  am- 
bition, he  felt  that  as  a  means  to  attain  his  aims 
63 


64  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

all  he  needed  was  an  office,  and  a  great  part  of 
his  life  was  spent  fruitlessly  in  a  humbling  search 
for  one.  He  was  entangled  with  private  debt  all 
his  life,  partly  owing  to  generous  living  and  poor 
management-  of  such  income  as  he  had,  and 
partly,  it  is  said,  owing  to  the  dishonesty  of  his 
most  trusted  domestics.  It  is  sad  to  think  of  the 
means  to  which  he  at  last  stooped  in  order  to 
enable  himself  to  follow  his  lofty  ambition,  which 
is  said  to  have  been  no  less  than  a  threefold  bene- 
fit— to  his  race,  his  country,  and  his  church. 

Bacon  at  thirty  found  a  friend  in  the  Earl  of 
Essex,  who  three  years  thereafter  tried  to  get  him 
the  attorney-generalship  and  later  the  solicitor- 
generalship.  Failing  in  both  cases,  Essex  pre- 
sented Bacon  with  a  piece  of  land  worth  about 
£1,800.  But  Bacon's  finances  went  from  bad  to 
worse.  He  was  arrested  for  debt,  and  was  dis- 
carded by  Essex,  some  say  because  he  gave  the 
earl  wholesome  but  unwelcome  warning  anent 
the  latter's  own  headlong  course  towards  treason ; 
others  say  because  the  earl  perhaps  grew  tired  of 
a  man  whom  no  assistance  could  enable  to  suc- 
ceed. Essex  afterwards  was  accused  of  heading 
a  conspiracy  whose  purpose  was  to  dethrone  the 
queen.  He  was  arrested,  tried,  and  executed. 
Bacon-was  one  of  the  prosecuting  counsel,  and  at 
the  trial  he  made  a  speech  pointing  out  the  guilt 
of  his  former  friend  and  benefactor.  His  con- 
temporaries generally  and  others  never  forgave 
Bacon  for  thus  insulting  a  precious  sentiment 
even  though  assisting  in  vindicating  justice. 

What  Bacon  wrote  about  the  sovereignty  and 
prerogatives  was  very  pleasing  to  Tudor  and 
Stuart,  and  it  was  probably  sincere.  Bacon  was 
forty-six  years  of  age  before  he  got  office ;  but  he 


FRANCIS  BACON.  65 

rose  by  gradation  from  solicitor-general  to  lord 
chancellor.  Three  years  after  attaining  the  latter 
distinction  he  was  degraded  from  office  on  the 
charge  of  corruption.  He  admitted  receiving 
gifts  from  litigants  but  denied  that  these  gifts  had 
influenced  his  decisions.  This  denial  was  borne 
out  by  the  fact  that  he  frequently  decided  against 
the  donors,  and  such  of  his  decisions  as  have  been 
traced  appear  to  be  just. 

The  rest  of  Bacon's  life  was  the  period  of  his 
greatest  literary  activity.  His  philosophical  pro- 
ductions are  arranged  mostly  under  the  general 
title  of  "Instauratio  Magna"  or  "The  Great 
Renovation/'  which  gives  the  reason  for  and  the 
description  of  the  new  method  proposed  by  him 
for  pursuing  scientific  investigation.  Bacon  is 
generally  considered  the  father  of  modern  science 
because  he  sounded  more  distinctly  than  any 
other  the  trumpet  call  to  a  new  method.  He 
advised  that  nothing  should  be  taken  for  granted, 
and  that  knowledge  should  proceed  upward  from 
particulars  to  more  particulars  and  thence  to 
general  truths,  the  method  of  reason  known  in 
logic  as  induction.  In  the  Aristotelian  method 
of  reasoning  down  from  the  general  principles 
syllogistically — the  deductive  method — Bacon 
seemed  to  perceive  almost  no  value  except  for 
disputation.  We  must  begin  anew,  he  said,  we 
must  collect  facts,  and,  by  a  continual  process  of 
"exclusion/'  we  can  get  the  common  essentials  of 
any  set  of  facts  relating  to  any  object  and  thus 
rise  to  a  general  statement.  Every  general  truth 
must  then  be  tested  and  verified  by  experiment. 

Though  not  a  scientific  man,  Bacon  thus 
pointed  out  the  method  for  science  in  all  but  one 
important  particular.  He  did  not  see  the  value 


66  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

of  hypotheses.  The  true  scientific  process,  as 
illustrated  by  three  centuries  of  science,  has  been 
(i)  investigation,  and  collection  of  facts,  (2)  form- 
ing a  hypothesis  or  general  supposition  from 
these  facts,  (3)  testing  the  hypothesis  by  experi- 
ment or  comparison  with  particular  cases,  and 
^4)  accepting  or  rejecting  the  hypothesis.  Thus 
step  by  step  science  builds  upwards,  following 
always  the  same  process.  Thus  deduction  must 
go  hand  in  hand  with  induction.  Bacon's  elo- 
quent appeal,  however,  brought  to  view  the 
dignity  of  the  search  after  details,  the  necessary 
oreliminary  of  all  scientific  progress.  Here  was 
a  great  idea  that  transformed  the  thinking  world, 
an  idea  of  which  glimpses  had  often  been  caught, 
but  which  history  shows  that  the  human  mind 
can  with  difficulty  follow,  for  this  idea  demands 
the  utmost  from  the  virtues  of  patience  and  in- 
tellectual humility.  There  is  no  mental  satisfac- 
tion comparable  to  that  of  grasping  a  general 
truth,  and  we  are  ever  apt  to  think  we  possess 
such  a  truth  before  it  is  rightfully  ours,  and  thus 
to  enjoy  in  the  illusion  the  satisfaction  to  which 
we  are  not  entitled  in  the  reality. 

Bacon  gave  the  best  expression  of  the  hunger 
of  his  age  for  a  method  by  which  physical  science 
might  progress.  The  great  thought  in  the 
Baconian  philosophy  is  summed  up  as  the 
method  of  inductive  reasoning,  but  the  books 
and  essays  abound  in  details  of  the  deepest  in- 
terest and  wisdom.  Though  not  wholly  original, 
his  famous  classification  of  the  "idola"  or  prin- 
cipal causes  of  error  may  be  placed  among  these. 
The  idola  are  four:  (i)  the  idols  of  the  tribe 
(idola  tribus),  which  are  race  errors  or  the  natural 
tendency  to  prejudice  or  preference  in  the  human 


DESCARTES.  67 

mind;  (2)  the  idols  of  the  den  (idola  specus),  which 
consist  of  individual  errors,  individual  peculiari- 
ties of  mind  that  give  rise  to  a  distorted  view ;  (3) 
the  idols  of  the  market  place  (idola  fori),  due  to 
the  influence  of  language  and  words;  (4)  the 
idols  of  the  theater  (idola  theatri),  or  errors  result- 
ing from  received  systems  of  philosophy  and 
from  wrong  methods  of  proof.  Each  in  a  word, 
the  four  groups  of  error  may  be  approximately 
stated  as  (i)  racial,  (2)  individual,  (3)  linguistic, 
and  (4)  logical,  errors. 

DESCARTES. 

Rene  Descartes  (1596  -  1650),  the  father  of  the 
so-called  Cartesianism,  a  most  notable  move- 
ment in  modern  philosophy,  was  born  at 
La  Haye,  in  Touraine,  France.  His  school  days 
over,  he  became  a  volunteer  in  the  Dutch  and 
afterwards  in  the  Bavarian  army,  in  the  latter  of 
which  he  saw  active  service.  He  thereafter  made 
a  peaceful  tour  through  several  neighboring 
countries,  and  then,  when  about  thirty  years  old, 
settled  down  in  Paris,  with  a  modest  income 
derived  from  money  bestowed  on  him  by  his 
father.  He  took  a  deep  interest  in  optics  and 
lens-making,  which,  it  may  be  noted,  was  at  a 
later  date  the  trade  of  the  great  Cartesian, 
Spinoza.  At  this  time,  also,  he  was  speculating 
with  intensity  on  the  sublime  subjects.  A  cardinal 
suggested  this  work  as  his  true  mission,  and  he 
adopted  the  suggestion.  The  last  twenty  years 
of  his  life  he  spent  in  Holland  in  study  and  the 
writing  of  philosophical  works.  Three  years  be- 
fore he  died  his  resources  were  augmented  by  a 
pension  of  3,000  francs  from  the  French  king. 


68  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

The  latter  part  of  his  life  was  easy  and  peaceful, 
suitable  for  his  meditations.  He  went  regularly 
to  mass,  slept  long,  and  followed  a  simple  and 
even  abstemious  dietary  regimen.  He  died  in 
Stockholm  while  a  guest  of  the  Swedish  court. 
Descartes  wrote  many  books,  the  principal  of 
which  are  the  "Discourse  of  Method/'  and  the 
"Meditations." 

The  method  of  Descartes  has  been  called  the 
subjective  method,  while  that  of  Bacon  is  rather 
the  objective  method.  Descartes  advises  us  to 
turn  the  eye  inward.  Like  Bacon,  he  dwelt  upon 
the  necessity  of  beginning  anew,  in  order  to  es- 
tablish step  by  step  the  structure  of  knowledge. 
The  first  truth  on  which  all  others  rest  he  found 
to  be  the  fact  of  his  own  existence.  "I  exist"  or 
"I  am  conscious"  must  stand  before  every  other 
proposition.  It  is  the  first  thing  we  can  assert 
and  therefore  the  first  truth  of  scientific  inquiry. 
"I  think,  therefore  I  am,"1  is  the  famous  saying  of 
Descartes ;  but  he  expressly  states  it  must  not  be 
taken  as  the  conclusion  of  a  syllogism  but  itself 
precedes  the  major  premise.  Existence  of  one- 
self is  proved  to  oneself  by  self-consciousness. 
Some  have  objected  to  the  aphorism  by  saying: 
"Why  not  say,  'I  walk,  therefore  I  am/  '  Des- 
cartes said,  in  answer,  that  consciousness  is 
necessary  first.  "I  am  conscious  of  walking, 
therefore  I  am" ;  so  the  introduction  of  the  idea 
of  walking  would  be  secondary  and  superfluous. 

The  next  step  in  the  edifice  of  knowledge  as 
raised  by  Descartes  is  the  proof  of  the  existence 
of  God.  He  used  three  main  arguments:  (i) 


1  In  Latin,  Cogito  ergo  sum;  in  French,  Je  ptnse  done 
je  suis. 


LATER  CARTESIANS.  69 

causality,  (2)  the  existence  of  an  idea  of  God  in 
our  minds,  and  (3)  that  the  finite  is  impossible 
without  the  infinite,  the  infinite  being  the  positive 
thing  and  the  finite  the  negative  thing,  the  limi- 
tation. He  said  that  the  existence  of  a  God  of 
truth  is  the  only  guaranty  of  the  truthfulness  of 
our  intuitive  ideas. 

Descartes  approved  Bacon's  method  in  natural 
science.  He  was  a  diligent  student  of  mathe- 
matics, physics,  and  anatomy,  expecting  to  find  in 
the  brains  of  animals,  by  dissection,  hints  of  the 
psychic  processes.  Descartes  was  the  first  to 
enunciate  the  startling  doctrine,  very  convenient 
to  vivisectionists,  that  animals  are  mere  automa- 
tons. 

LATER  CARTESIANS. 

The  two  most  important  names  among  the 
successors  of  Descartes  in  his  schopl  of  thought 
are  Malebranche  and  Spinoza.  Nicolas  Male- 
branche  (1638-1715)  was  a  Frenchman  and  a 
Catholic  priest ;  Benedict  (or  in  Hebrew,  Baruch) 
de  Spinoza  (1632  -  1677)  was  a  recluse  scholar  of 
the  Jewish  race  in  Holland.  Both  had  a  great 
admiration  for  the  speculations  of  Descartes. 

Malebranche  deduces  from  his  master  a  view 
of  the  Deity  bordering  on  pantheism.  He,  how- 
ever, recognizes  the  existence  of  a  material  world 
independent  of  our  consciousness,  though  .only 
the  ideas  supplied  by  God  are  perceptible  to  us, 
whether  through  the  intellect  or  through  the 
senses.  The  soul  and  body  being  so  different  in 
nature  and  substance  can  hold  no  communica- 
tion with  each  other.  The  Deity,  accordingly, 
enables  the  one  to  act  on  the  other  by  a  new 
miracle  performed  by  Him  on  the  occasion  of 


70  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

every  volition  of  the  soul.  This  is  called  the 
theory  of  "Occasional  Causes."  This  theory  of 
Malebranche,  evolved  from  Descartes'  philoso- 
phy, was  adopted  by  many  subsequent  Cartesians. 
It  was  with  difficulty  that  Malebranche  could 
reconcile  the  Cartesian  doctrine  that  the  in- 
dividual is  only  a  negation  and  the  infinite  the 
only  reality,  with  the  standards  of  ecclesiastical 
authority  to  which  he  was  bound. 

Spinoza,  who  had  no  reconciliation  to  make, 
accepted  the  full  consequences  of  the  Cartesian 
logic,  which  swept  him  into  pantheism.  Spinoza 
employed  his  great  reflective  powers  in  proving 
the  unity  of  all  things  and  that  the  finite  is  but  a 
mode  of  the  infinite,  the  latter  and  not  the  former 
being  the  great  reality.  Spinoza  was  expelled 
with  curses  from  the  Jewish  church,  and  his 
principal  writings  were  placed  on  the  Index  of 
forbidden  books  by  the  Roman  Catholic  authori- 
ties. He  braved  dangers  and  difficulties,  refused 
university  chairs,  and  lived  his  short  life  in  self- 
denial  in  order  that  he  might  devote  himself  to 
philosophy.  He  was  reviled  by  his  contempo- 
raries as  an  atheist,  a  term  which  a  later  critic 
changed  to  acosmist  (no-world-ist).  "A  God- 
intoxicated  man"  is  the  next  verdict,  and  finally 
comes  the  tender  tribute  of  Schleiermacher,  the 
Christian  theologian,  who  speaks  of  this  greatest 
pantheist  as  "the  holy  and  excommunicated 
Spinoza." 

LEIBNITZ. 

Gottfried  Leibnitz  (1646-1716),  who  was,  in 
his  day,  also  a  notable  statesman  of  Germany,  is 
remembered  mainly  as  the  propounder  of  the 
doctrine  called  the  "Pre-established  Harmony/' 


HOBBES.  71 

He  discarded  the  Cartesian  theory  of  "Occasional 
Causes/'  the  theory  which  required  a  special 
miracle  from  God  for  every  separate  action  of  any 
of  His  creatures.  Leibnitz  thought  this  was  de- 
manding too  much  of  the  divine  miraculous 
power,  and  taught  that  there  is  between  mind  and 
matter  a  harmony  pre-established  by  the  Deity, 
or,  to  use  his  own  famous  illustration,  mind  and 
matter  correspond  in  their  activities  similarly  as 
two  clocks  wound  up  together  to  keep  exactly  the 
same  time.  Leibnitz  also  formulated  the  theory 
of  monadology.  He  taught  that  the  monads  are 
the  elements  of  things,  whether  mental  or  phys- 
ical, but  they  have  no  dimensions.  They  are 
rather  the  essences  or  souls  of  things  and  differ 
only  in  activity.  Every  monad  is  a  microcosm, 
the  universe  in  little.  Leibnitz  is  replete  with 
detail  in  elaborating  this  deeply  mystic  hypoth- 
esis. 

HOBBES. 

Thomas  Hobbes  (1588-1679)  belongs  to  the 
insurgent  class  of  thinkers  and  his  works  have 
been  much  condemned  on  account  of  their  ma- 
terialistic strain.  He  was  an  Englishman  by 
birth  and  education,  taking  his  bachelor's  degree 
at  Oxford  when  twenty  years  of  age.  For  the 
first  forty  years  of  his  long  life  his  powerful  in- 
tellect did  not  bestir  itself  to  any  noteworthy 
degree.  Private  tutoring  to  the  families  of  the 
Earl  of  Devonshire  and  other  gentry  occupied 
him  mainly  during  that  period.  He  was  a  clas- 
sical scholar  and  a  mathematician.  One  of  his 
earliest  works  was  a  translation  of  the  Greek  his- 
torian Thucydides.  His  mathematics  was  specu- 


72  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

lative  and  faulty,  and  it  was  not  until  he  turned 
his  mind  to  political  and  mental  questions  that  he 
achieved  an  inconvenient  fame  that  placed  his 
liberty  in  jeopardy  at  intervals  during  the  latter 
part  of  his  life. 

Hobbes  was  over  sixty  years  of  age  before  he 
produced  his  great  political  work,  "The  Levi- 
athan/' In  this  book  he  discoursed  of  the  state 
under  the  metaphor  of  a  great  monster  whose 
body  is  made  up  of  the  people  of  the  nation.  He 
included  in  the  book  some  speculation  on  meta- 
physics, and  he  also  wrote  treatises  on  liberty, 
human  nature,  etc.  Hobbes  was  a  clear  and 
brilliant  writer.  His  dogmatic  nature  was  amus- 
ingly illustrated  in  a  series  of  controversies  in 
which  he  engaged  with  an  Oxford  professor  of 
mathematics.  Hobbes  was  a  factor  in  the  recon- 
structive period,  fully  imbibing  the  spirit  of 
Bacon,  with  whom  he  appears  to  have  been  per- 
sonally acquainted.  He  makes  psychology  a 
science  of  observation,  and,  by  giving  the  fore- 
most place  to  the  knowledge  we  acquire  through 
the  senses,  he  became  the  precursor  of  the 
modern  sensationalists  (those  who  hold  that  ideas 
are  founded  entirely  on  sensation).  He  clearly 
points  out  an  important  truth,  till  then  hardly 
recognized,  namely,  that  sensations  are  merely 
modifications  of  the  thinking  mind,  and  are  there- 
fore, of  course,  not  qualities  of  the  objects  with- 
out us.  He  describes  the  important  part  the 
association  of  ideas  plays  in  memory. 

Hobbes  is  the  author  of  some  trenchant  say- 
ings, among  which  is  the  oft-quoted  aphorism : 
"Words  are  wise  men's  counters ;  they  do  but 
reckon  by  them;  but  they  are  the  money  of 
fools." 


MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  73 

LOCKE. 

John  Locke  (1632-1704),  probably  the  most 
widely  read  and  most  popular  of  writers  on  philo- 
sophical subjects,  is  a  representative  of  the  best 
type  of  the  thoughtful  English  gentleman  and 
scholar.  He  was  born  in  Somersetshire,  the  son 
of  a  country  lawyer.  He  was  educated  at  West- 
minster School  and  Oxford  University.  He 
studied  medicine  but  never  graduated  as  a  phy- 
sician. He  practiced  the  profession,  nevertheless, 
at  different  times,  and  was  commonly  called 
"Doctor  Locke."  He  became  interested  in  poli- 
tics, and  rose  through  several  private  secretary- 
ships to  be  Secretary  of  the  Board  of  Trade  when 
forty-one  years  of  age.  At  fifty-two  Locke  took 
up  his  abode  in  the  great  asylum  of  all  persecuted 
thinkers,  Holland.  His  tolerance  and  freedom  of 
opinion  and  the  fall  of  his  patron,  Shaftesbury, 
had  by  that  time  rendered  it  safer  for  him  to 
keep  out  of  England. 

Locke's  career  as  an  author  began  when  he 
was  fifty-four.  He  had  taken  a  long  while  to 
mature,  but  none  wrote  in  a  more  calm,  deliber- 
ate, and  unpretentious  way,  impressive  of  wis- 
dom and  honesty.  Six  years  later  he  followed 
the  Prince  of  Orange  to  England,  and  when  the 
prince  became  king,  Locke  was  presented  with  a 
modest  political  office.  Locke  was  fifty-eight 
years  old  when  he  completed  and  published  the 
"Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding," 
a  matchless  production  which  has  been  the  de- 
light, not  only  of  philosophers,  but  of  intelligent 
people  everywhere.  Locke  also  wrote  treatises 
in  defense  of  popular  sovereignty  and  religious 
liberty.  A  large  number  of  letters  were  written 


74  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

by  him  in  answer  to  controversialists.  In  fact, 
all  he  wrote  on  the  understanding,  on  govern- 
ment, on  education,  or  such  works  as  the 
"Reasonableness  of  Christianity,"  had  unusual 
power  of  drawing  fire,  to  judge  by  the  number 
and  variety  of  his  critics  and  their  onslaughts.  In 
the  midst  of  all,  at  home  or  in  exile  or  in  his  last 
idyllic  retirement  at  Sir  Francis  Masham's 
beautiful  country  seat  in  Essex,  he  preserved  the 
equanimity,  good  temper,  and  good  sense  of  a 
well-balanced  Anglo-Saxon  mind.  The  last  four 
of  his  seventy-two  years  were  spent  in  religious 
and  philosophical  repose  and  meditation. 

Locke  rested  philosophy,  even  the  ultimate 
principles  and  categories,  on  sensation  and  per- 
ception. He  thought  reason  could  by  its  proc- 
esses and  the  aid  of  these  two  powers  accom- 
plish everything  in  philosophy  without  the  aid 
of  innate  ideas.  He  held  that  God,  individual 
identity,  and  morality  are  demonstrable  in  reason, 
while  the  dogmas  of  Christianity  are  also  worthy 
of  acceptance  on  the  rational  ground  of  probabil- 
ity. This  rejection  of  the  mysterious,  and  oppo- 
sition to  the  claims  of  blind  faith,  gave  rise  to  the 
criticism  that  Locke's  principles  led  to  skepti- 
cism ;  but,  if  they  did,  he  left  it  to  others  at  a  later 
date  to  push  them  there.  He  himself  had  no 
liking  for  such  inferences. 

No  man  of  such  wide  influence  in  philosophy 
seems  to  have  read  so  little  as  Locke.  It  is 
doubtful  if  he  was  acquainted  with  anything 
more  than  the  names  of  even  illustrious  contem- 
poraries like  Hobbes.  Some  have  argued  that 
this  was  an  advantage  to  his  simplicity  and 
originality,  he  having  thus  "raised  himself  above 
the  almsbasket  and,  not  content  to  live  lazily  on 


LOCKE.  75 

scraps  of  begged  opinions,  set  his  own  thoughts 
to  work  to  find  and  follow  truth."  This  independ- 
ence would  have  been  fatal  to  any  but  a  very 
extraordinary  man's  value  in  philosophy  or 
science,  and  even  at  the  best  the  cost  must  be 
greater  than  the  gain. 

Locke  caught  the  fire  from  the  pages 
of  Descartes,  which  glowed  to  him  with  special 
splendor.  Laying  the  foundations  of  the  mind 
in  "sensation"  and  "perception,"  Locke  analyzes 
these;  a  thought  derived  from  sensation  may  be 
simple  or  complex.  Color  is  an  example  of  a 
simple  thought.  Space,  extension,  and  motion 
are  perceived  by  the  eyes  and  by  touch,  and  so 
are  complex.  Reflection  supplies  a  third  class  of 
thoughts,  as  when  "the  mind  turns  its  views  in- 
ward upon  itself."  The  ideas  of  thinking  and 
willing  in  all  their  phases  come  from  reflection. 
Matter  has  primary  and  secondary  qualities.  The 
primary  qualities  belong  to  the  body  and  exist 
apart  from  us ;  the  secondary  qualities  are  mere 
sensations  in  ourselves  and,  though  they  have 
causes  in  the  objects  without,  these  objects 
possess  nothing  similar  to  what  we  experience, 
that  is,  to  the  sensation.  Extension  and  motion 
are  examples  of  primary  qualities;  color,  heat, 
and  cold  are  examples  of  the  secondary  qualities. 

These  opinions  are  said  to  have  led  to  idealism 
in  metaphysics,  and  the  doctrine  that  "all  we  know 
is  phenomena  and  their  laws,"  a  doctrine  which 
since  then  sprang  up  and  has  become  very 
widespread.  Locke,  however,  regarded  the  ex- 
istence of  matter  as  a  necessary  inference.  He 
stated,  but  apparently  independently  of  Hobbes 
and  less  completely,  the  theory  of  the  association 
of  ideas. 


76  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

CONDILLAC. 

In  France  the  Abbe  Condillac  (1714-1780) 
formulated  a  philosophy  on  similar  lines  to  those 
of  Locke's.  He  is  also  famous,  however,  on  ac- 
count of  his  writings  on  political  economy,  which 
appeared  almost  simultaneously  with  those  of 
Adam  Smith,  the  Scotch  professor  and  the  first 
of  the  great  economists  in  Britain.  Condillac 
and  his  followers  are  called  sensationalists  or 
exponents  of  sensationalism  because  they  hold 
that  all  our  ideas  are  derived  from  sense  impres- 
sions. 

BERKELEY. 

George  Berkeley  (1685  -  1753),  Bishop  of 
Cloyne,  in  Ireland,  developed  the  philosophy 
known  as  idealism  and,  in  so  doing,  performed  a 
service  which  some  one  had  to  perform,  and 
which  has  been  of  much  value  to  succeeding 
thinkers.  Born  in  Ireland,  and  educated  at  Dub- 
lin University,  he  entered  the  ministry  of  the 
Anglican  Church  and  became  successively  a 
deacon,  a  chaplain,  and  a  dean.  At  the  age  of 
forty-three  he  married  the  daughter  of  a  judge. 
He  went  to  America  to  try  to  realize  a  favorite 
project  of  founding  a  college  in  the  Bermudas, 
sacrificing  £1,100  a  year  for  £100,  but,  aid  not 
coming  from  the  government  as  he  had  expected, 
he  returned  to  England  with  his  family  after 
three  years,  and  was  soon  raised,  at  the  age  of 
forty-nine,  to  the  position  of  Bishop  of  Cloyne. 

Berkeley  was  an  earnest  student  of  Descartes 
and  Locke,  and  he,  no  doubt,  found  in  the  latter's 
theory  regarding  sensation  the  principle  from 
which  he  evolved  his  idealism.  He  showed  that 


HUME.  77 

the  mind  is  always  occupied  with  its  own  proc- 
esses, sensations,  and  ideas,  and  therefore  could 
not  possibly  know  that  material  objects  exist.  He 
said  that  the  existence  of  matter  is  simply  an 
unwarranted  inference  from  our  sensations  of 
color,  heat,  cold,  sound,  etc.,  and  therefore 
matter  is  a  mere  figment  of  the  imagination.  He 
said  that  these  sensations  that  we  have  neverthe- 
less have  a  cause  and  that  this  cause  is  not  an 
unknowable  thing  called  matter,  but  the  action 
of  the  divine  mind  on  our  minds.  The  finite 
mind  can  have  no  relation  with  anything  except 
thoughts,  and  only  because  all  permanent  objects 
are  thoughts  in  the  infinite  mind  are  we  enabled 
to  come  into  relation  with  them  or  knowledge 
of  them  at  all. 

There  have  been  more  writers  subsequently 
willing  to  admit  the  force  of  Berkeley's  destruc- 
tive criticism  than  of  his  constructive  argument. 

HUME. 

David  Hume  (1711-1776),  famous  both  as 
philosopher  and  historian,  but  principally  as  the 
former,  was  born  in  Edinburgh,  Scotland.  His 
father  was  a  small  landed  proprietor,  and  his 
mother  the  daughter  of  a  prominent  jurist.  His 
mother  was  early  widowed.  She  carefully 
trained  her  three  children,  of  whom  David  was 
the  youngest.  We  infer  from  his  "Life"  and  cer- 
tain letters  that  he  spent  about  three  years  as  a 
student  at  Edinburgh  University.  He  passed  a 
few  years  at  the  family  country  house,  Ninewells, 
commenced  the  study  of  law,  abandoned  it,  and 
at  the  age  of  twenty-three  went  to  Bristol  with 
his  testimonials  to  seek  a  mercantile  situation. 


78  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Failing  to  get  employment,  he  paid  a  three  years5 
visit  to  France.  He  was  twenty-eight  years  old 
when  he  first  appeared  as  an  author,  the  work 
being  the  "Treatise  of  Human  Nature."  Two 
years  later  appeared  the  "Essays."  Hume  was 
now  living  in  retirement  at  his  brother's  house, 
Ninewells.  He  tried  to  get  the  chair  of  moral 
philosophy  in  Edinburgh,  but  failed.  He  there- 
after passed  from  tutorship  at  home  to  private 
secretaryship  abroad,  settling  again  at  Ninewells, 
and  finally  becoming  librarian  of  the  Advocate's 
Library  in  Edinburgh.  This  office  gave  him  op- 
portunity for  research,  but  the  salary  attached  to 
it  was  very  small  and  is  said  to  have  been  gener- 
ously bestowed  by  Hume  on  a  poor  poet.  Eleven 
years  later  he  became  secretary  to  the  English 
embassy  in  France.  When  he  returned  to  Edin- 
burgh the  income  from  his  writings,  augmented 
by  a  civil  pension,  amounted  to  the  handsome 
revenue  of  £  1,000  a  year.  Hume  then  set  up  an 
establishment  of  his  own,  but  never  married.  He 
was  personally  a  man  of  very  genial  disposition 
and  his  company  was  much  sought  after.  When 
death  came,  he  met  it  with  a  cheerful  fortitude. 

In  philosophy  Hume  carried  the  subjective 
method  to  the  most  daring  extreme.  He  ap- 
proved the  destructive  criticism  furnished  by 
Berkeley,  and  attempted  nothing  constructive. 
Hume  finds  nothing  but  conscious  experience, 
and  hence  says  that  all  we  can  aver  of  mind  is  the 
sum  of  its  conscious  experiences.  To  these  he 
gives  the  names  of  "impressions"  and  "ideas." 
The  primary  experiences  are  the  impressions, 
and  the  secondary  experiences  are  the  ideas. 
Hume  therefore  held,  in  opposition  to  Descartes 
and  Berkeley,  that  through  the  instrumentality 


THE  SCOTTISH  SCHOOL.  79 

of  reason  we  cannot  prove  the  existence  of  God, 
of  the  self  or  ego,  or  of  matter.  The  categories 
of  time,  space,  free  will,  causality,  individual 
identity  throughout  life,  etc.,  also  have  no  author- 
ity in  reason. 

Hume's  challenge  was  a  broad  one  and  at- 
tempted to  place  the  burden  of  proof  of  every- 
thing whatsoever  anew  upon  the  inquirer.  The 
narrowness  of  his  classification  of  the  primary 
contents  of  consciousness,  restricting  them  to 
sensations,  has  gained  for  him  and  his  followers 
also  the  name  of  sensationalists.  Hume  argued 
against  the  possibility  of  free  will  by  saying 
"action  without  a  motive  is  impossible/'  and  that 
free  will,  when  we  define  it,  means  action  without 
a  motive.  Hume  stated  his  system  as  a  dog- 
matic philosophical  skepticism  rather  than  as  a 
philosophical  agnosticism,  which  is  obviously  all 
it  could  be. 

THE  SCOTTISH  SCHOOL. 

The  Scottish  or,  as  it  is  often  called,  the  Com- 
mon Sense  school  of  philosophy,  began  in  Scot- 
land with  Thomas  Reid  (1710-  1796),  was  con- 
tinued by  his  pupil,  Dugald  Stewart,  and  met 
with  much  favor  in  France,  particularly  among 
the  so-called  Eclectics,  of  whom  Victor  Cousin 
was  the  most  prominent.  The  learned  Edinburgh 
professor,  Sir  William  Hamilton,  who  flourished 
in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  was  also 
an  expounder  of  the  same  teaching,  to  which, 
however,  he  added  many  points  of  a  striking 
character.  The  new  system  was,  in  its  main 
features,  a  protest  against  Berkeley's  idealism 
and  Hume's  skepticism.  The  title  of  Reid's  first 


8o  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

great  book,  "An  Enquiry  into  the  Human  Mind 
on  the  Principles  of  Common  Sense,"  shows  the 
mainspring  of  the  new  movement. 

Reid  was  born  near  Aberdeen  in  his  father's 
manse.  His  ancestors  for  many  generations  were 
principally  Presbyterian  ministers.  He  received 
his  education  at  Aberdeen  and,  after  graduating, 
held  the  office  of  university  librarian  for  ten  years. 
After  that  he  became  a  minister.  An  essay  from 
his  pen,  opposing  the  theory  that  moral  subjects 
could  be  dealt  with  on  the  same  method  as 
mathematics,  appeared  in  the  "Transactions  of 
the  Royal  Society."  Reid's  reputation  as  a  meta- 
physician grew  apace,  and  four  years  later,  in 
1752,  he  was  elected  to  the  chair  of  philosophy  at 
Aberdeen.  Twelve  years  thereafter  he  succeeded 
Adam  Smith,  the  celebrated  writer  on  political 
economy,  as  professor  of  moral  philosophy  in 
Glasgow.  This  was  also  the  year  in  which  the 
"Enquiry"  appeared.  Reid  married  at  the  age  of 
thirty,  and  died  at  the  age  of  eighty-six,  having 
survived  all  his  children  but  one  daughter. 

Reid  said  that  Hume's  skeptical  position  was 
attained  by  correct  reasoning,  but  started  from  a 
wrong  principle.  This  principle  he  declared  to 
be  that  "all  the  objects  of  my  knowledge  are  ideas 
of  my  own  mind."  He  said  that  Descartes 
originated  this  error,  Locke  and  Berkeley  de- 
veloped it,  and  Hume  brought  it  to  fruition.  Reid 
argued  that  we  are  able  to  rise  above  the  merely 
subjective  states  of  consciousness  and  obtain 
direct  knowledge  of  reality  by  common  sense  or 
natural  judgment.  To  the  phrase  "common 
sense,"  Reid  ascribed,  no  doubt,  much  the  same 
meaning  as  the  phrase  commonly  conveys  in 
ordinary  speech.  Much  has  been  written  to  de- 


THE  SCOTTISH  SCHOOL.  81 

fend  Reid  against  this  interpretation,  which 
seems  like  an  appeal  from  reason  to  vulgar  un- 
reason. Reid  apparently  makes  "common  sense" 
to  consist  of  innate  judgments  or,  as  he  calls 
them,  "judgments  immediately  inspired  by  our 
constitution/'  These  judgments  he  likens  to  the 
language  of  the  mind,  and  thus  reposes  philoso- 
phy on  the  same  foundation  as  that  on  which  he 
finds  "the  structure  of  all  languages  is 
grounded."  Reid  argues  against  reducing  all 
our  knowledge  to  sensation  by  showing  that  sen- 
sation and  perception  are  so  far  different  that  the 
more  the  sensation  the  less  the  perception,  and 
vice  versa,  as  is  best  shown  in  the  familiar  experi- 
ment of  applying  the  two  points  of  a  pair  of 
geometrical  dividers  to  the  back  of  the  hand  and 
the  tip  of  the  index  finger,  or  to  the  back  and 
to  the  tip  of  the  tongue.  He  holds  that  sensation 
and  perception  are  absolutely  distinct  in  kind, 
and  that  although  perception  does  not  occur 
without  sensation  preceding  or  accompanying  it, 
yet  perception  does  not  proceed  out  of  sensation. 
A  close  parallel  has  been  found  between  the 
Scotch  "common  sense"  and  the  "categories"  of 
Kant. 

Dugald  Stewart  was  a  very  eloquent  man  in 
his  Edinburgh  class  room.  Among  his  students 
were  many  who  later  became  famous — including 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  Lord  Jeffrey,  Sydney  Smith, 
Lord  Brougham,  Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  James 
Mill,  and  Sir  Archibald  Alison ;  but  it  would  be 
too  much,  of  course,  to  credit  the  special  bril- 
liancy of  the  pupils  to  their  early  instruction  in 
the  exhilarating  Reidian  doctrines. 

Sir  William  Hamilton  was  descended  from 
professors  in  several  generations,  as  Reid  from 


82  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

ministers.  His  classical  and  philosophical  erudi- 
tion was  extraordinary.  His  great  reputation 
attracted  students  from  all  parts  of  the  earth  to 
his  class  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Mill's 
criticism  pillories  him  as  a  sort  of  Platonic  mind, 
brilliant  and  ingenious,  but  not  holding  with  a 
firm  grip  to  any  one  position.  Mill  is  impatient 
of  inconsistency  in  Hamilton  but  tolerant  of  what 
he  believes  to  be  absurdity  in  writers  like  Leib- 
nitz. Experience  shows  that  the  jagged  Scylla 
and  the  yawning  Charybdis  of  every  great  sys- 
tem of  philosophy  are  inconsistency  on  the  one 
hand  and  absurdity  on  the  other. 

Sir  William  Hamilton's  lectures  are  rich  in 
illustration  and  allusion,  and  contain  splendid 
statements  of  numerous  philosophical  ideas.  He 
used  the  term  "belief"  in  place  of  the  designation 
"common  sense,"  and  on  belief  he  based  the  direct 
knowledge  of  the  external  world.  By  belief  we  ar- 
rive at  the  ideas  of  time,  space,  cause  and  effect,  etc. 
These  ideas  are  the  forms  of  our  thought  which 
make  direct  perception  of  the  material  world  pos- 
sible. Belief  is  classed  by  Hamilton  as  a  kind  of 
knowledge,  and  not  defined  in  the  usual  way  as 
conviction  based  on  probability  but  falling  short 
of  actual  knowledge.  By  means  of  the  beliefs 
above  referred  to  we  perceive  in  matter  such 
qualities  as  extension,  figure,  divisibility,  etc..  the 
primary  qualities  of  Locke.  These  Hamilton  de- 
scribed as  modes  of  the  non-ego  or  not-self,  while 
the  secondary  qualities,  color,  heat,  and  other  sen- 
sations, which  are  commonly  allotted  as  qualities 
of  matter,  are  described  as  modes  of  the  ego. 
The  freedom  of  the  will,  like  infinity  of  time  and 
space,  is  rested  upon  belief,  because  both  deter- 
minism or  necessitarianism  (the  doctrine  that  the 


DK.  THOMAS  BROWN.  »3 

will  is  not  free)  and  indeterminism  (the  doctrine 
that  the  will  is  free)  are  inconceivable. 

Sir  William  Hamilton's  philosophy  has  some- 
times been  called  "the  philosophy  of  the  con- 
ditioned," on  account  of  his  phase  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  essential  limitation  of  the  human  faculties. 
He  postulates  the  unconditioned  as  the  genus  of 
which  there  are  two  species :  the  infinite  and  the 
absolute,  or,  as  he  describes  them  in  the  above 
connection,  the  unconditionally  unlimited  and 
the  unconditionally  limited.  Time  and  space,  in 
their  infinity  of  extension,  are  examples  of  the 
first,  and  in  their  infinite  divisibility  are  examples 
of  the  second.  The  self-destroying  character  of 
the  most  comprehensive  ideas,  as  alleged  by 
Hamilton,  is  made  by  him  the  excuse  for  resign- 
ing so  much  as  knowledge  to  take  it  back  as  be- 
lief. Hamilton,  while  a  man  of  religious  faith  and. 
the  most  popular  philosophical  teacher  for  men 
of  faith,  has  been  much  borrowed  from  by  the 
agnostic  school,  who  accept  his  doctrine  of  the 
unknowable  but  fix  much  narrower  boundaries 
for  the  field  of  belief  than  he  was  inclined  to  de- 
mand. 

DR.  THOMAS  BROWN. 

One  of  the  most  noted  Scottish,  philosophers 
was  Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  who,  however,  was  an 
opponent  of  Reid.  Brown  was  the  author  of  one 
of  the  most  successful  works  on  metaphysics  ever 
published — "Lectures  on  the  Philosophy  of  the 
Human  Mind."  It  went  through  nineteen  editions 
in  Great  Britain  and  even  more  in  America.  He 
was  the  successor  of  Dugald  Stewart  in  the 
Edinburgh  professorship.  The  great  success  of 


84  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

this  book  was  probably  due  to  the  poetical  and 
florid  dress  in  which  he  arrayed  his  views  on 
philosophy.  His  work  aimed  to  show  that  the 
philosophical  skepticism  of  Hume  was  not  to  be 
confounded  with  religious  skepticism  but  could 
exist,  even  more  conveniently  than  could  a  dog- 
matic realism,  alongside  of  a  divine  revelation. 
Berkeley's,  by  comparison  with  Hume's,  was  a 
system  of  natural  theology. 

KANT. 

Immanuel  Kant  (1724-1804)  was  in  meta- 
physical speculation  one  of  the  most  powerful 
and  prolific  masters  that  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
His  life  was  quiet  and  uneventful.  The  son  of  a 
saddler  in  Konigsberg,  he  received  his  school  and 
college  education  in  this  his  native  city.  He  was 
intended  for  the  church  and  even  preached  in  his 
student  days,  but  never  became  a  licentiate.  The 
death  of  his  father  and  his  own  uncertainty  as  to 
the  choice  of  a  profession  led  him  to  take  up 
private  tutoring  for  a  livelihood.  After  nine 
years  of  this  kind  of  life  Kant  presented  himself 
again  to  the  university  authorities  and  received 
the  doctorate.  He  was  forty-two  when  he  got 
his  first  steady  position  as  under-librarian  in  the 
university  of  his  native  city.  In  1770  he  obtained 
the  professorship  of  logic  and  metaphysics  there. 
Meantime  his  pen  had  been  busy,  and  his  splen- 
did reputation  throughout  Germany  attracted 
students  from  all  quarters.  Kant's  treatise  on 
religion  aroused  the  fears  of  the  Prussian  govern- 
ment, and  for  many  years  he  kept  silence  on 
religion,  owing  to  a  promise  exacted  by  the 
cabinet  Though  living  a  solitary,  studious  life, 


KANT.  85 

he  was  a  man  of  graceful  manners  and  a  hearty 
conversationalist.  He  never  married,  and  his 
nature  was  probably  somewhat  lacking  in  senti- 
ment. He  lived  almost  to  complete  his  eightieth 
year. 

Kant  wrote  on  physical  geography,  astronomy, 
and  ethnology,  as  well  as  on  metaphysics.  The 
retardation  of  the  earth  and  moon  by  their 
mutual  attraction,  the  "nebular  hypothesis"  in 
explanation  of  the  formation  of  systems  and 
planets,  and  the  theory  of  periodic  winds  as  due 
to  the  varying  velocity  of  the  zones  of  the  earth's 
surface  are  some  of  his  valuable  contributions 
to  thought  on  physical  science.  The  list  of  his 
works  on  metaphysics  is  a  formidable  one,  as  is 
also  the  style  in  which  they  are  generally  written, 
turgid  with  a  copious  and  novel  terminology. 
The  "Critique  of  Pure  Reason"  is  his  masterpiece 
and  best-known  book.  Then  come  the  "Critique 
of  Practical  Reason,"  the  "Critique  of  Judg- 
ment," and  the  "Foundations  of  the  Metaphysic 
of  Ethics." 

Kant  had  a  wide  knowledge  of  a  great  variety 
of  subjects,  but  in  his  chosen  domain  he  seems 
to  have  confined  his  study  mainly  to  his  immedi- 
ate philosophical  predecessors,  Locke  and  Leib- 
nitz. In  his  earlier  writings  he  evolves  knowl- 
edge from  the  categories,  without  endeavoring  to 
explain  from  what  these  arise.  Roused  by  the 
skepticism  of  Hume,  he  sought  for  an  explana- 
tion and  broached  the  theory  of  transcendental- 
ism. Knowledge,  according  to  Kant,  is  a  prod- 
uct of  two  factors,  one  factor  furnished  by  the 
subject  or  self,  the  other  factor  given  to  it;  the 
one  is  the  a  priori,  antedating  experience,  and 
the  other  the  a  posteriori,  corning  later  in  experi- 


86  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

ence.  Space  and  time,  to  Kant,  are  not  demon- 
strable but  are  the  necessary  forms  of  thought. 
The  identity  of  the  ego,  the  principle  of  causality, 
and  the  freedom  of  the  will  are  not  demonstrable, 
nay,  are  not  even  comprehensible ;  they  transcend 
our  intelligence  but  yet  symbolize  great  realities 
without  which  thought,  memory,  and  morality 
could  not  exist.  The  Deity  is  also  a  transcen- 
dental ideal  but  none  the  less  representative  of 
reality.  Three  transcendental  ideas  which  he 
regards  as  of  great  importance  to  morality  are 
the  immortality  of  the  soul,  free  will,  and  the 
existence  of  an  intelligent  ground  of  things.  He 
says  reason,  unaided  by  revelation,  fails  to  prove 
these  and  the  understanding  fails  to  grasp  them, 
but  these  transcendental  ideas  are  equally  unsus- 
ceptible of  disproof  and  are  warranted  in  con- 
sideration of  their  moral  importance.  A  well- 
known  moral  maxim  of  Kant's  is  "Act  so  that 
the  maxim  of  your  conduct  may  be  fitted  to  be  a 
universal  rule."  Kant,  in  his  "Practical  Reason," 
accepts  teleology,  the  argument  from  design — 
especially  moral  design.  "The  world,"  he  says, 
"must  be  represented  as  having  originated  from 
an  idea,  if  it  is  to  harmonize  with  that  use  of 
reason  without  which  we  should  hold  ourselves 
unworthy  of  reason — viz.,  the  moral  use,  which 
rests  entirely  on  the  idea  of  the  supreme  good." 

FICHTE. 

Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte  (1762  -  1814)  produced 
a  philosophical  system  that  may  be  said  to  have 
been  the  offspring  of  Kant's  and  to  have  become 
the  parent  of  Schopenhauer's.  At  the  conclusion 
of  his  education,  which  he  owed  to  the  kindness 


FICHTE.  87 

,of  a  nobleman  in  his  native  Lusatia,  he  began  to 
read  Kant's  books  and  discovered  at  once  a 
master  and  a  vocation.  Fichte's  diary  records 
the  touching  story  of  the  poverty-stricken  scholar 
seeking  out  the  renowned  philosopher  Kant, 
meeting  at  first  with  a  cold  reception  but  winning 
at  last,  by  a  transcendental  essay,  the  recog- 
nition and  esteem  of  the  great  critic.  Kant 
recognized  at  once  in  Fichte  an  apt  disciple, 
one  whose  grasp  of  the  Critical  Philosophy  was 
so  thorough  as  to  make  him  a  worthy  co-worker 
in  developing  it.  This  essay  by  Fichte  treated  of 
the  relation  of  Kantianism  to  revelation.  Kant 
immediately  proceeded  to  find  a  publisher  for  the 
essay.  It  was  printed  but,  by  some  accident,  the 
author's  name  was  omitted  from  the  first  edition. 
The  world  hailed  the  book  as  undoubtedly  writ- 
ten by  Kant,  so  like  was  it  in  its  doctrine  and  in 
its  metaphysical  acumen.  Kant  immediately  cor- 
rected the  mistaken  impression  as  to  authorship 
and,  at  the  same  time,  bestowed  high  praise  on 
the  work.  Thus  at  one  bound  Fichte  leaped  into 
fame. 

At  the  age  of  thirty-one  Fichte  became  a 
professor  at  Jena,  where  he  had  received  his  uni- 
versity training.  In  1799  he  was  charged  with 
atheism  and  resigned  his  professorship.  His 
proud  spirit  would  not  stoop  to  any  explanation, 
but  in  his  later  writings  he  declares  "the  knowl- 
edge and  love  of  God  the  end  of  life."  His  "Way 
to  a  Blessed  Life,"  and  other  works  of  his  ma- 
turest  years  exhibit  a  different  spirit  from  that 
which,  as  was  charged,  could  regard  God  as  only 
"the  eternal  law  of  right."  Fichte  spent  the  most 
of  his  life  thereafter  in  Berlin,  writing  and  lec- 
turing. 


88  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

The  transcendentalism  of  Fichte  has  been 
called  "Practical  Idealism/'  so  insistent  is  it  on 
the  paramount  nature  of  the  will  in  the  ego  or 
self.  It  regards  the  ego  as  pure  activity.  The 
external  world  or  non-ego  is  accounted  for  by 
this  statement :  "The  ego  posits  itself  as  deter- 
mining the  non-ego."  According  to  Fichte,  the 
will  of  the  individual  stands  first.  It  looks  on 
itself,  sets  limits  to  itself,  makes  of  itself  an  ego, 
and  then,  with  the  assistance  of  this  ego,  makes 
the  non-ego.  This  is  idealism,  but  the  idea  of  the 
will  and  the  power  of  will  is  here  given  a  place 
that  Berkeley  never  thought  of  giving  to  it.  This 
thought  of  the  will  is  a  development  of  the 
Kantian  philosophy  which  laid  so  much  stress  on 
the  practical  side  of  life.  Fichte's  speculations 
obviously  tended  at  an  early  stage  to  transfuse 
themselves  into  ethics,  to  which  department  he 
devoted  special  attention.  He  wrote  much  on 
duty.  He  declared  duty  to  be  the  only  proper 
motive.  In  1800  he  announced  his  doctrine  of 
the  absolute  ego,  the  infinite  will  of  the  universe. 
He  held  that  each  will  is  a  manifestation  of  this 
absolute  will,  which  can  never  be  known  in  its 
purity,  but  only  as  broken  up.  This  doctrine 
brought  Fichte  close  to  the  position  of  Schelling, 
of  whose  form  of  idealism  we  will  treat  in  the 
next  article. 

Fichte,  accordingly,  had  really  two  systems — 
an  earlier  and  a  later ;  the  one  of  a  very  individual, 
and  the  other  of  a  very  general  character.  It  is 
his  early  egoistic  idealism,  severe  in  its  consist- 
ency, that  has  made  the  most  powerful  impres- 
sion. 

Fichte,  the  forerunner  of  the  thoroughgoing 
Pessimists,  held  that  the  world  is  independently 


SCHELLING.  89 

bad  but  affords  a  worthy  object  on  which  the  will 
of  the  ego  can  exercise  itself.  The  doctrine  of  the 
will  more  emphatically  taught  by  Schopenhauer 
is  mostly  admitted  to  be  directly  borrowed  from 
Fichte,  though  Schopenhauer  was  inclined  to 
look  with  disdain  on  the  general  scheme  of 
Fichte. 

SCHELLING. 

Friedrich  Wilhelm  Joseph  von  Schelling 
(1775  -  1854)  was  an  eminent  thinker  who  gave  a 
further  development  to  the  Practical  Philosophy 
which  Fichte  had  elaborated  from  the  system  of 
Kant.  Like  Fichte,  he  was  for  a  number  of 
years  a  professor  at  Jena,  and  he  made  that  uni- 
versity in  its  most  noted  days,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  an  attractive  center  for 
all  philosophical  inquirers.  Schelling  was  reared 
in  luxury.  He  was  a  precocious  boy,  speedily 
outgrowing  every  school  to  which  he  was  sent. 
He  went  to  the  University  of  Tubingen  at  the 
unusually  early  age  of  fifteen.  Hegel  at  that 
time  (1790)  was  still  a  student  there.  At  nine- 
teen Schelling  published  an  essay  which  made 
him  famous  and  won  high  commendation  from 
Fichte,  whose  ideas  it  expounded.  Other 
writings  followed,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty-three 
Schelling  entered  on  his  career  of  professor  at 
Jena,  where  Fichte  was  also  still  teaching.  He 
was  next  called  to  a  chair  at  Wurzburg,  and  at 
the  age  of  thirty-one  went  to  Munich,  where  he 
led  a  retired  life  for  thirty-five  years.  He  there- 
after made  his  headquarters  in  Berlin,  where  his 
long  and  most  productive  life  came  to  a  close. 

Schelling's  philosophy,  while  appropriating 
the  Fichtean  conception  of  the  will  as  the  sub- 


90  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

stance  giving  rise  to  the  varied  appearances  that 
we  call  the  world,  did  not  ascribe  the  same 
measure  of  power  to  the  individual  will  or  ego 
as  Fichte's  philosophy  did.  It  took  from  Spinoza, 
of  whom  Schelling  was  a  most  admiring  student 
all  his  life,  the  idea  of  the  Absolute,  and  com- 
bined this  idea  with  the  main  idea  of  the  Practical 
Philosophy.  The  ruling  doctrine  of  the  Schelling 
system  may  be  thus  stated :  The  ego  produces 
the  non-ego,  but  not  by  its  own  force,  not  out  of 
its  own  nature,  as  Fichte  would  have  it ;  it  is  uni- 
versal nature  working  within  us  which  produces 
the  non-ego.  The  world,,  according  to  this  view, 
is  still  the  creation,  the  realization  of  spirit,  not 
our  own  spirit,  but  the  absolute.  Schelling's 
transcendental  idealism  thus  ascribed  a  less  im- 
portant place  to  the  ego  and  assigned  a  more 
definite  office  to  the  absolute  than  Fichte's  did. 
Schelling  presumed  a  more  definite  function  for 
the  infinite  will  of  the  universe.  For  this  he 
acknowledged  an  obligation  to  Spinoza.  This 
combination  of  the  systems  of  Fichte  and 
Spinoza,  propounded  by  a  man  possessed  of  great 
emotional  nature,  won  the  favor  of  the  so-called 
Romantic  school  of  which  Schlegel  was  the  most 
noted  member. 

An  important  doctrine  of  Schelling' s  is  that  of 
polarity.  Schelling  noted  in  everything  a 
polarity,  two  opposites  or  poles,  and  illustrated 
this  idea  from-  chemistry,  in  which  it  is  a  familiar 
phenomenon.  Beneath  this  polar  opposition, 
which  seems  to  have  suggested  the  subsequent 
Hegelian  doctrine  of  contraries,  Schelling  found 
the  identity,  the  absolute  which  underlies  all 
difference,  a  doctrine  which  suggests  the  "unity" 
in  Hegel, 


MODERN  PHILOSOPHY.  91 

HEGEL. 

Georg  Wilhelm  Friedrich  Hegel  (1770-  1831) 
is  one  of  the  greatest  names  of  the  German  tran- 
scendentalism, which  had  vogue  in  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  was  the  son  of  a 
civil  official  of  Wurtemberg,  and  his  education 
was  accomplished  in  his  native  Stuttgart  and  at 
the  University  of  Tubingen.  His  student  career 
gave  no  great  promise,  and  though  he  qualified 
in  theology  he  was  a  failure  as  a  preacher.  His 
comradeship  with  Schelling  at  the  university 
probably  awoke  the  slumbering  philosophic  fac- 
ulty. He  completed  his  course  at  the  university 
and  became  a  private  tutor.  His  first  effort  in 
literature  was  a  heterodox  but  religiously  sym- 
bolizing life  of  Christ.  Hegel  read  diligently  the 
contemporary  literature  and  kept  a  copious 
scrap-book,  which  he  filled  with  extracts  from 
books  and  newspapers.  He  lectured  one  winter 
at  Jena  to  a  class  of  eleven  students.  He  was  an 
editor  for  a  little  over  a  year,  and  at  length  be- 
came a  schoolmaster  in  charge  of  a  so-called 
gymnasium,  or  higher  school,  in  Nuremberg.  In 
this  position  he  remained  eight  years.  At  forty- 
one  he  married  a  young  lady  of  nineteen,  who 
proved  to  him  an  excellent  wife.  They  had  two 
sons,  the  elder  of  whom  became  a  distinguished 
historian.  Meantime  Hegel's  fame  as  a  writer  on. 
economics  and  philosophic  subjects  had  been 
rising,  and  in  1816  resulted  in  his  appointment  to 
a  chair  in  the  University  of  Heidelberg.  Here  he 
had  classes  ranging  from  four  to  thirty  students. 
It  was  here  thSt  he  brought  out  his  "Encyclo- 
paedia of  the  Philosophical  Sciences."  After  two 
years'  teaching  at  Heidelberg  he  succeeded 


92  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Fichte  in  the  chair  of  philosophy  at  Berlin 
Hegel  died  from  the  cholera  plague  which  swept 
over  Germany  in  1831. 

The  name  of  Hegel  is  connected  with  the  most 
startling  doctrine  that  ever  was  enunciated  by  a 
man  of  undoubtedly  great  intellectual  power. 
That  doctrine,  which  constitutes  the  principle  of 
the  Hegelian  method,  is  the  paradox:  "the 
identity  of  contradictories."  Perhaps  this  prin- 
ciple may  be  vulgarly  described  as  the  expression 
in  philosophy  of  the  common  observation  "ex- 
tremes meet."  Hegel  applies  this  principle  to  the 
origin  of  all  things  and  makes  these  the  offspring 
of  the  two  most  comprehensive  extremes :  Being 
and  Non-being.  He  likens  Being,  Non-being, 
and  the  world  of  experience  to  three  links  in  a 
circular  chain.  It  takes  three  links  at  least  to 
make  an  endless  chain,  and  nothing  but  an  end- 
less chain  could  persist  as  does  the  universe  in 
eternal  indestructibility.  How  then  do  Being 
and  Non-being,  which  Hegel  declares  are  in  their 
ultimate  significance  identical,  produce  the  world 
we  know?  We  feel  that  we  must  be  dealing  with 
profoundly  mystical  symbols  when  we  stand  with 
Hegel  in  his  sanctum  sanctorum  and  endeavor  to 
see  with  him  the  vision  of  creation.  He  tells  us 
that  Being  passes  into  Non-being  and  "enriches" 
itself,  and  becomes  a  third  thing,  the  existence 
we  know.  In  support  of  his  dictum  of  the  iden- 
tity of  contradictories,  he  says  every  conception  is 
one-sided,  passes  to  its  opposite,  and  attains  unity 
in  a  third,  which  last  is  the  practical  conception 
available  for  our  use.  Pure  light  is  the  same  as 
darkness ;  we  cannot  see  it  nor  anything  com- 
posed of  it,  but  passing  into  darkness  it  returns 
"enriched,"  breaks  up  into  color,  and  becomes 


HEGEL.  93 

visible.  Without  a  contrary  nothing  could  come 
into  being,  and  contradiction  forms  the  essence 
of  everything.  Truly,  there  is  a  great  thought 
lurking  in  these  propositions,  but  its  necessary 
qualifications  and  limitations  would  apparently 
completely  transform  it.  Hegel  adopted  the 
doctrine  of  "flux"  taught  by  the  ancient  Greek 
philosopher  Heraclitus — that  everything  is  in  a 
state  of  flux,  that  nothing  is,  but  only  "becomes"; 
Being  is  only  a  current  term  for  what  is  more 
properly  described  as  "becoming."  Nothing  is 
ever  fixed  and  definite.  All  is  but  a  passing 
moment  and  an  immanent  movement.  True 
Being  would  be  fixed  and  motionless.  Change 
involves  difficulty  similar  to  that  which  was  found 
in  motion  by  Zeno  the  Eleatic. 

The  peculiar  doctrine  of  perception  formulated 
by  Hegel  is  that  the  "relation"  is  the  real  thing, 
and  that  the  subject  and  the  object  depend  upon 
their  relation  to  each  other,  which  relation  is  all 
that  there  is  of  reality.  Hegel  despised  the  em- 
pirical philosophers,  ridiculed  scientists  like 
Newton,  and  counted  the  ordinary  belief  called 
"common  sense"  to  be  a  superstition.  Hegel, 
however,  departed  from  his  province  when  he  at- 
tempted to  introduce  his  method  into  natural 
science,  and  the  result  was  fruitless. 

Hegel  professed  a  religious  mysticism  in  which 
God  appeared  as  the  self-development  of  the 
"absolute,"  and  a  morality  Christian,  explained 
after  the  fashion  of  his  famous  paradox.  Self- 
renunciation  was  the  ego  passing  into  nothing 
and  returning  "enriched."  The  Christian  prin- 
ciple of  dying  to  live,  of  losing  one's  life  in  order 
to  find  it,  was  thus  approvingly  consorted  with 
the  former  dictum  of  the  identity  of  contradic- 


94  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

tories  and  the  genesis  thereby  of  real  and  practi- 
cal things. 

COMTE. 

Auguste  Comte  (1798-1857),  the  founder  of 
Positivism  and  of  "The  Religion  of  Humanity/' 
was  the  son  of  a  taxgatherer  in  Montpellier, 
France.  He  appears  to  have  been  a  rebellious 
schoolboy,  but  succeeded  in  acquiring  enough 
mathematics  to  enable  him  to  earn  a  living  for 
some  years  thereafter  by  teaching  that  science. 
In  1825  he  entered  upon  a  marriage  which,  never 
happy,  ended  in  a  separation  seventeen  years 
later.  By  scanty  tutoring  and  an  occasional 
magazine  article,  Comte  made  a  precarious  live- 
lihood for  many  years.  He  began  to  give  a 
course  of  lectures  in  which  he  proposed  to  out- 
line Positivism  for  the  first  time.  After  the  third 
lecture  had  been  delivered  he  had  an  attack  of 
melancholy  so  dismal  as  to  lead  him  to  attempt 
self-destruction.  He  jumped  into  the  river  Seine, 
but  a  rescuer  appeared  and  his  life  was  saved. 
After  a  little  over  a  year's  rest  he  started  lectur- 
ing again.  In  1830  the  first  volume  of  the 
"Course  of  Positive  Philosophy"  saw  the  light. 
It  took  twelve  more  years  to  complete  the  entire 
six  volumes.  In  1833  Comte  received  an  appoint- 
ment as  school  inspector,  which  made  his  income 
reach  $2,000  a  year.  He  lost  this  position  some 
nine  years  later,  owing  to  his  making  a  gratui- 
tous and  irrelevant  attack  on  his  employers  in  the 
preface  to  the  sixth  volume  of  the  "Course."  He 
thereupon  applied  for  financial  assistance  to  John 
Stuart  Mill,  who  was  an  admirer  of  the  scientific 
side  of  Positivism.  Mill  joined  with  three  others 
in  contributing  £240  to  Comte's  support  during 


COMTE.  95 

the  ensuing  year.  Comte  had  regarded  this  as 
a  perpetual  pension,  the  tribute  of  admiring 
discipleship  to  enable  the  master  to  continue  in 
the  good  work  of  upbuilding  and  spreading  his 
truth.  He  did  not  conceal  his  chagrin  when  the 
allowance  was  cut  down  at  the  expiration  of  the 
year.  Mill  was  astonished,  and  immediately 
allowed  their  correspondence,  aforetime  so  cor- 
dial, to  lapse  entirely.  Comte  subsisted  as  best 
he  could  for  a  number  of  years,  and  then,  through 
the  kind  offices  of  a  friend,  enough  subscriptions 
were  got  from  disciples  to  provide  a  steady 
annual  income  equivalent  to  about  $1,000  a  year. 
This  continued  and  enabled  the  philosopher  to 
devote  his  undivided  energies  to  his  influential 
but  apparently  non-revenue-producing  books 
until  the  year  1857,  when  he  died  from  cancer. 

Few  intellectual  movements  are  more  deserv- 
ing of  notice  than  Positivism.  While  transcen- 
dentalism reigned  in  Germany,  this  new  scientific 
spirit  awoke  in  France.  Comte  as  a  thinker  is 
given  by  most  competent  judges  superior  credit 
for  his  work  in  systematizing  science  and  for 
almost  the  creation  of  the  science  of  sociology. 
From  his  earliest  writings  onward  he  shows  an 
anxiety  to  produce  something  that  might  prove  a 
real  practical  benefit  to  humanity.  This  thought, 
ever  present,  gives  to  his  entire  work  a  unity 
which  has  not  always  been  discerned  by  able 
opponents.  By  way  of  leading  on  to  scientific 
views  regarding  society,  he  undertook  to  review 
the  sciences,  to  point  out  the  laws  of  their 
development  and  the  succession  in  which  they 
would  appear  and  progress.  First  of  all  he  lays 
down  the  law  of  the  three  states.  These  repre- 
sent three  different  attitudes  of  the  human  mind 


96  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

in  attempting  to  explain  phenomena.  The  earli- 
est of  them  is  the  theological.  In  this  state  all 
phenomena  are  explained  by  mankind  as  volition 
either  in  the  object  or  in  some  supernatural  be- 
ing. The  second  state  is  the  metaphysical,  in 
which  abstract  ideas  or  principles  are  proffered 
as  explanations.  The  third  and  last  state  is  the 
positive,  in  which  phenomena  are  compared  and 
arranged,  and  the  particular  is  grouped  under 
the  general  fact.  Thus,  to  borrow  a  well-known 
Positivist  illustration,  the  Arab  says  opium 
produces  sleep  because  God  directly  causes  it  to 
do  so ;  the  mediaeval  physician,  in  Moliere,  says  it 
does  so  because  it  has  a  soporific  quality;  the 
modern  scientist  does  not  offer  any  explanation 
— that  is  beyond  his  power  of  analysis — he  merely 
analyzes,  compares,  and  classifies  the  phenom- 
enon and  its  antecedents  indefinitely. 

The  opinior  that  here  fails  to  discriminate  from 
superstition  the  religious  aspirations  is  opposed 
by  the  common  and  most  reliable  testimony  of 
experience,  for  the  deepest  appreciation  of  the 
religious  sentiment  occurs  not  in  the  infancy  but 
in  the  advanced  maturity  of  the  individual,  and 
the  best  expression  of  it  in  the  noblest  minds  of 
the  race. 

Comte  held  that  social  phenomena  could  be 
arranged  and  classified  and  their  exact  laws  dis- 
covered similarly  as  in  the  case  of  physical  phe- 
nomena. He  divided  sociology  into  two  depart- 
ments :  the  statical,  containing  the  laws  of  order, 
and  the  dynamical,  containing  the  laws  of  prog- 
ress. In  the  theological  state,  he  held  that  the 
will  of  gods,  with  the  resulting  doctrines  of  divine 
right,  etc.,  was  considered  an  accurate  explana- 
tion of  political  events.  In  the  metaphysical  state 


COMTE.  97 

men  spoke  of  popular  sovereignty,  the  state  of 
nature,  and  other  abstractions.  In  the  positive 
state  the  phenomena  are  merely  labeled  and 
grouped  under  laws.  This  last  state  is  supposed 
to  bring  fruitless  disputation  to  an  end  and  ren- 
der science  steadily  and  substantially  progress- 
ive for  all  time  to  come. 

Positive  philosophy  purports  to  be  a  science 
of  the  sciences,  and  accordingly  a  classification 
of  the  sciences  is  attempted.  Comte's  famous 
classification  or  hierarchy  of  the  sciences,  which 
is  intended  to  indicate  the  order  in  which  the 
sciences  grew  up  and  keep  developing,  is  as  fol- 
lows :  (i)  mathematics,  (2)  astronomy,  (3)  phys- 
ics, (4)  chemistry,  (5)  biology,  (6)  sociology.  The 
principle  of  the  arrangement  here  adopted  is 
avowedly  from  the  general  toward  the  less  gen- 
eral, from  the  least  special  by  degrees  to  the  most 
special.  Mathematics,  he  holds,  is  now  in  the 
positive  state,  while  sociology,  the  last  of  the 
series,  will  also  be  the  last  to  pass  from  the  two 
earlier  states  and  arrive  finally  also  in  the  positive 
state.  Furthermore,  the  second  science  of  the 
series  rests  on  the  first,  the  third  on  the  previous 
two,  and  so  on  as  a  sort  of  pyramid.  The  order 
here  given  to  the  sciences  and  the  principle  of 
decreasing  generality  adopted  in  Comte's  classi- 
fication were  subjected  to  criticism  by  Herbert 
Spencer,  who  asserts  that  many  sciences  have 
developed  according  to  increasing  generality, 
and  any  order  of  succession  in  sciences  must  be 
artificial,  as  sciences  are  all  interdependent  and 
cannot  be  isolated.  The  answer  returned  by 
Positivists  is  that  Comte's  classification  is  not  the 
only  one  possible  but  yet  has  the  practical  value 
and  warrant  of  classifications  in  other  sciences, 


98  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

notably  in  the  two  great  departments  of  zoology 
and  botany. 

Cornte  from  the  beginning  had  the  ambition  to 
be  a  social  reformer,  and  he  completed  his  work 
by  crowning  utilitarianism  (the  doctrine  that 
utility  is  the  sole  standard  of  virtue)  with  the 
name  of  religion — the  Religion  of  Humanity. 
For  this  purpose  he  conceived  Humanity  as  the 
Great  Being,  a  sort  of  personality,  worthy  of  our 
service  and  our  worship.  This  Great  Being  was 
to  take  the  place  of  God.  Comte  also  sketched 
a  constitution  of  a  church,  a  priesthood,  and  a 
ritual  which  was  to  supplant  Catholicism.  This 
audacious  proposal  only  scandalized  the  reli- 
gious, and  excited  the  contemptuous  pity  of  the 
scientific  world.  While  Positivism,  the  philoso- 
phy, has  received  much  applause  from  the  agnos- 
tic element  in  society,  Positivism,  the  religion, 
has  proved  too  transparent  a  metaphor  to  call 
forth  anything  nearer  devotion  than  a  moral 
sentiment. 

Comte's  ethical  system  averred  that  moral 
transformation  must  precede  any  real  advance 
in  the  individual  or  in  society.  Social  feel- 
ing, styled  altruism,  triumphing  over  self-love  or 
egoism,  is  the  goal  assigned  towards  which  all 
are  counseled  to  strain.  In  the  reorganized  so- 
ciety of  the  future  Comte  predicts  a  lofty  moral 
part  for  women,  whose  cause  he  urges  with  an 
enthusiasm  similar  to  that  manifested  for  it  by 
John  Stuart  Mill. 

THE  PESSIMISTS. 

Two  prominent  German  thinkers  have  pre- 
sented to  us  a  scheme  of  the  world  which  made  a 


THE  PESSIMISTS.  99 

deep  impression  on  the  thought  of  the  latter  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  Arthur  Schopenhauer 
(1788-1860),  author  of  "The  World  as  Will  and 
Idea,"  and  Edward  von  Hartmann  (1842-1906), 
author  of  "Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious,"  are 
the  two  philosophers  to  whom  the  recently  in- 
vented term  of  "pessimist"  has  been  most  dis- 
tinctly applied.  Such  a  superlative,  and  therefore 
presumably  passionate,  view  of  things  as  theirs 
has  been  a  familiar  phenomenon  among  the 
moral  teachings  in  the  past.  Asceticism  has 
nearly  always  been  based  on  a  pessimistic  esti- 
mate of  the  present  life,  in  which  it  has  frequently 
been  asserted  there  is  overwhelming  predomi- 
nance of  pain  over  pleasure. 

Schopenhauer's  system  resembles,  except  in  its 
terminology,  pure  Buddhism  so  closely  as  scarce- 
ly to  require  statement  to  any  one  who  knows 
the  outline  of  the  doctrines  of  that  despairing 
religion.  To  a  cosmogony  which  derives  every- 
thing professedly,  not  from  a  logical,  intelligent 
or  spiritual  cause,  but  from  an  occult  and  irra- 
tional impulse,  which  he  designates  "Will"  or, 
more  definitively,  the  "Will  to  live,"  Schopenhauer 
adds  an  ethics  which  is  unmixedly  ascetic,  sanc- 
tioning only  self-sacrifice  and  actions  based  on 
compassion.  Consciousness,  according  to  Scho- 
penhauer, entails  only  pain  on  the  conscious 
being.  Pleasure  is  merely  a  negative  thing — the 
remission  of  a  portion  of  the  pain.  Conscious- 
ness is,  therefore,  a  Cosmic  blunder,  for  which  we 
are  partly  responsible  and  are  continually  atoning 
until  we  yield  it  up.  This  doctrine  reminds  us  of 
the  Greek  philosopher  Anaximander's  one  extant 
sentence,  already  quoted :  "All  things  must  in 
equity  again  decline  into  that  form  from  which 


loo  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

they  have  arisen,  to  render  each  other  atonement 
and  punishment  for  their  offense  against  the  order 
of  time."  Consciousness,  related  Schopenhauer, 
has  been  brought  into  existence  by  the  objectifi- 
cation  of  the  "Will  to  live."  It  reaches  its  high- 
est expression  in  man.  In  man  reason  appears 
and  ultimately  becomes  strong  enough  to  subdue 
this  "Will  to  live."  The  individual — who  is  sub- 
ject to  reincarnation  so  long  as  the  race  exists 
and  he  fails  in  conquering  "the  will," — and  the 
race  itself  also  then  complete  their  peace  in  utter 
annihilation,  the  pessimistic  goal  corresponding 
to  the  Buddhistic  Nirvana.  Schopenhauer  re- 
jected the  inference  of  the  advisability  of  suicide, 
which  he  held  to  be  an  act  of  egotistical  assertion 
of  the  will,  not  the  suppression  of  it.  He  held 
that  the  renunciation  of  life  was  to  be  mainly  ac- 
complished by  celibacy,  which,  to  the  most  en- 
lightened, would  have  the  authority  of  a  law.  The 
obvious  objection  to  this  plan  is  that  it  could 
succeed  in  extirpating  only  the  presumably  most 
valuable  individuals,  and  even  if  it  were  adopted 
by  the  race  in  the  aggregate  it  could  only  clear 
the  world  for  occupation  by  the  more  degraded 
forms  of  consciousness,  the  swelling  and  pro- 
gressing lower  orders  of  animals.  In  trying  to 
escape  this  conclusion,  Schopenhauer  shows  the 
collapse  of  his  practical  recommendation  by 
bringing  forward  a  poorly  mystical  surmise  as 
follows :  "And  I  think  I  may  assume  that  along 
with  the  highest  manifestation  of  will  the  feebler 
counterpart  of  it  in  the  animal  kingdom  would 
also  disappear." 

Hartmann  modified  Schopenhauer's  great 
practical  recommendation  into  one  for  the  race 
at  some  future  time  and  not  for  the  individual 


HERBERT  >SPRNCEP.  :  201 

now.  Schopenhauer  defined  pleasure  as  merely 
the  absence  of  pain,  but  Hartmann  held  that 
there  is  positive  as  well  as  negative  pleasure,  and, 
by  way  of  justifying  his  pessimism,  drew  up  an 
arithmetical  valuation  to  show  that  the  balance  is 
found  on  the  side  of  pain.  His  much-quoted 
illustration,  more  naive  than  convincing,  is  that 
the  pain  of  the  animal  being  eaten  far  exceeds  in 
intensity  the  pleasure  of  the  other  animal  engaged 
in  eatingit.  Between  Schopenhauer's  "Will  to  live" 
and  Hartmann's  "Unconscious,"  the  average  in- 
dividual will  be  able  to  make  little  real  distinc- 
tion. Both  represent  a  necessity  incapable  of 
explanation,  and  Schopenhauer  does  not,  any 
more  than  Hartmann,  ascribe  the  attribute  of 
consciousness  to  the  original  first  cause,  "Will." 

Schopenhauer  was  a  man  of  querulous  tem- 
perament. He  lived  a  solitary  and  contempla- 
tive, but  by  no  means  ascetic,  life.  Von  Hart- 
mann met  with  an  accident  to  his  foot  which 
brought  an  incurable  disease  upon  him  while  yet 
a  stripling  of  twenty  in  the  army,  and  he  was 
confined  to  his  bedroom  until  his  death. 

HERBERT  SPENCER. 

Herbert  Spencer  (1820-1903),  the  founder  of 
what  has  been  called  specifically  the  Synthetic 
Philosophy,  was  born  in  Derby,  England,  on  the 
2/th  of  April,  1820.  His  father  was  a  school- 
master and  private  teacher  of  mathematics.  Like 
his  great  contemporary,  John  Stuart  Mill,  Mr. 
Spencer  received  his  early  education  at  home 
under  the  tuition  of  his  father,  from  whom  he 
caught  much  of  the  enthusiasm  for  biological 
science  which  so  distinguishes  his  writings.  His 


- 102  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

father  was  much  interested  in  entomology,  and 
the  young  philosopher  early  became  an  industri- 
ous collector  of  insect  specimens.  It  does  not 
appear  that  Mr.  Spencer  owed  any  of  his  exten- 
sive knowledge  to  pupilage  in  any  school.  The 
only  other  teacher  that  he  had  besides  his  father 
was  an  uncle,  a  Congregational  minister,  with 
whom  he  completed  his  studies  at  the  age  of 
seventeen.  He  then  entered  upon  the  profession 
of  railway  civil  engineer.  This  he  followed  with 
success  for  the  next  eight  years,  not,  however, 
without  meantime  showing  his  philosophical 
bent  by  occasional  articles.  The  most  notable 
of  these  was  that  which  he  contributed,  at  the 
age  of  twenty-two,  to  the  Non-Conformist  on 
"The  Proper  Sphere  of  Government."  The  de- 
cline of  public  interest  in  railroad  undertakings 
led  Mr.  Spencer  to  devote  his  entire  time  to  liter- 
ary work.  From  his  twenty-eighth  to  his  thirty- 
third  year  he  was  sub-editor  of  the  London 
Economist.  His  first  great  work,  "Social  Statics/' 
was  published  in  1850,  when  he  was  thirty  years 
of  age.  Five  years  later  his  "Principles  of  Psy- 
chology" appeared.  Thereafter  a  continuous 
stream  of  books  and  essays  on  sociology,  biology, 
general  science,  ethics,  education,  etc.,  flowed 
from  his  pen.  Spencer  led  a  retired  single  life 
in  London.  To  the  building  up  of  his  philosophy 
he  devoted  a  long  life,  not  without  much  almost 
heroic  struggle  in  the  earlier  stages  of  his  ca- 
reer. He  steadfastly  declined  all  academical  dis- 
tinctions. 

His  writings,  clear  in  thought,  elegant  in  dic- 
tion, and  abounding  in  interesting  illustration, 
have  long  since  achieved  a  popularity  such  as  has 
fallen  to  the  lot  of  few,  if  any,  philosophical 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  103 

treatises.  There  is  a  great  coherence  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Mr.  Spencer.  He  appears  in  the  van- 
guard of  the  philosophers  of  evolution — some  of 
his  greatest  works  antedated  Darwin's  "Origin  of 
Species" — and  his  presentation  and  unfolding  of 
the  great  principle  has  yielded  much  light  on 
many  previously  obscure  matters. 

Evolution  to  Mr.  Spencer  is  not  merely  in  the 
main  the  principle  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  in 
the  struggle  for  existence,  the  principle  known 
as  natural  selection,  but  a  doctrine  of  contraction 
— of  a  passing  from  homogeneity  to  heterogene- 
ity. Evolution  is  the  name  of  this  great  process 
which  he  perceives  to  be  going  on  in  this  part  of 
the  universe,  a  process  to  be  inevitably  succeeded 
by  the  process  of  dissolution  which  may  probably 
be  at  present  the  order  of  the  day  in  another 
region  of  space.  This  eternal  alternation  of  im- 
measurably vast  periods  of  evolution  with  im- 
measurably vast  periods  of  dissolution  he  postu- 
lates as  the  story  of  the  universe. 

He  accepts  the  nebular  hypothesis — that  the 
planets  are  the  products  of  their  several  suns. 
Thus  our  sun  at  one  time  extended  beyond  Nep- 
tune. In  cooling,  and  shrinking  it  left  a  ring 
which  ultimately  condensed  into  that  most  dis- 
tant planet.  Subsequent  cooling  and  shrinking 
left  the  rings  which  by  contraction  formed  the 
other  planets,  in  the  order  of  time  correspond- 
ing to  the  order  of  space  in  which  the  telescope 
finds  them.  The  moon  similarly  is  the  product 
of  the  earth,  and  Saturn's  rings  are  moons  in  the 
process  of  formation.  This  theory  is  adopted, 
not  originated,  by  Mr.  Spencer.  Suggested  and 
outlined  by  Kant,  it  had  been  carried  onward  by 
the  astronomers,  Herschel  and  Laplace.  Mr, 


104  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

Spencer  sees  in  it,  however,  an  application  of  his 
great  principle. 

The  earth  once  formed,  everything  has  de- 
veloped to  what  it  now  is,  including  no  less  the 
body  and  the  mind  of  man.  In  this  immense 
task  the  principle  of  natural  selection,  with  an  un- 
limited credit  at  the  bank  of  time,  is  called  upon 
to  bear  the  chief  and  indeed  nearly  the  sole 
burden.  This  method  of  selection — which,  how- 
ever, plainly  does  not  provide  for  creation,  its 
necessary  concomitant  in  any  work  of  progress — 
has  been  dubbed  by  others  of  the  same  school, 
"the  cosmic  process/'  It  has  guided  scientists, 
particularly  in  botany  and  zoology,  to  many  im- 
portant facts,  yet  is  coming  to  be  generally  re- 
garded as  not  the  whole  truth  but  only  one  strand 
of  it. 

Much  of  the  speculations  of  Herbert  Spencer 
belong  to  biology  and  physical  science.  To  the 
study  of  psychology  he  has  added  some  ideas 
that  have  produced  a  deep  impression  on  contem- 
porary thought.  These  still,  however,  mostly 
bear  the  character  of  hypotheses,  and  it  seems 
impossible  that  they  are  capable  of  ever  being 
placed  in  the  treasury  of  actual  science,  as  in 
their  nature  they  are  not  amenable  to  the  crucial 
test  of  verification. 

The  great  metaphysical  hypothesis  of  Herbert 
Spencer  concerns  the  origin  of  the  categories. 
He  has  often  been  assailed  as  a  Kantian  because 
he  joins  issue  with  Locke  on  the  doctrine  of 
innate  ideas.  He  holds  that  there  are  innate 
ideas  in  the  individual  conscious  being.  These 
he  enumerates  as  follows :  (i)  space  and  time, 
(2)  matter,  (3)  rest  and  motion,  (4)  force,  (5)  con- 
sciousness, (6)  the  soul  or  ego.  He  supports 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  105 

Hamilton  in  maintaining  that  these  ideas  rest  on 
belief,  but  draws  a  distinction,  not  noted  by 
Hamilton,  between  belief  in  a  thing  of  which  the 
opposite  is  inconceivable  and  belief  that  is  an- 
other name  for  an  opinion  resting  on  insufficient 
evidence.  These  two  forms  of  belief  are  similar 
only  in  the  fact  that  we  cannot  prove  them,  but 
while  belief  in  the  categories  is  a  necessity  of 
thought,  belief  of  the  ordinary  sort  can  be  lightly 
taken  up  and  lightly  set  aside.  Mr.  Spencer 
holds  that  these  primary  data  of  consciousness 
are  empirical  in  the  race  of  living  things  but  a 
priori  in  the  individual. 

For  example,  the  idea  of  space  began  to  dawn 
at  an  early  period  in  the  minds  of  our  ancestors. 
It  was  at  first  merely  an  isolated  matter  of  ex- 
perience ;  but  motor,  tactual,  and  visual  appear- 
ances persisting  through  ages  with  a  perfect  uni- 
formity of  testimony  as  to  space  such  as  never 
once  disappointed  the  mind,  these  impressions 
became  organized  and  ultimately  formed  one 
necessity  of  thought,  the  negation  of  which  was 
inconceivable.  At  the  same  time  space,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Spencer,  is  not  merely  a  form  of 
thought  but  a  form  of  things.  The  empiricism  of 
Locke,  which  extended  only  to  the  individual,  is 
thus  widened  to  embrace  the  race  or  even  any 
conscious  series  through  which  the  individual 
may  trace  his  ancestry.  The  collective  life  could 
succeed  in  producing  that  which  the  individual 
life  was  all  too  short  to  produce. 

Next,  Mr.  Spencer  takes  up  the  principle  of 
cause  and  effect,  which  is  a  necessity  of  thought. 
He  accepts  the  foundation  Sir  William  Hamilton 
pointed  out  for  this  principle :  namely,  the  wider 
principle  that  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  conceive 


106  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

the  totality  of  being  to  increase  or  decrease — 
the  destruction  of  matter  or  force  once  in  exist- 
ence is  inconceivable,  and  the  addition  of  further 
matter  or  force  from  nothing  is  inconceivable. 
Denial  of  the  principle  of  cause  and  effect  in- 
volves the  assertion  that  some  quantity  of  cause 
has  disappeared  without  effect  or  some  quantity 
of  effect  has  arisen  without  cause.  The  principle 
of  cause  and  effect  is  thus  held  to  be  a  deduction 
from  a  more  general  principle  that  has  been 
established  in  the  human  mind  like  the  other 
categories  by  the  numberless  verifying  experi- 
ences of  our  ancestors  that  produce  a  necessity  of 
thought. 

The  principle  of  causality  leads  us  to  declare 
that  our  impressions  and  ideas  have  a  cause.  Mr. 
Spencer  says  these  are  the  resultant  o-f  the  co- 
operation of  object  and  subject,  that  is,  of  the 
ego  and  non-ego  or  the  self  and  the  external 
world.  "Our  mental  evolution  is  the  result  of 
converse  between  organism  and  environment." 
Under  the  phenomena  and  the  ego  exists  a  com- 
mon reality,  but  this  reality  can  never  be  known 
in  itself  and  at  first  hand.  It  is  the  legitimate  in- 
ference on  the  ground  of  causality  but  our  knowl- 
edge of  its  nature  is  relative.  We  can  only  be 
sure  that  it  exists.  It  is  the  one  great  unknow- 
able reality  of  which  we  and  all  things  else  are 
the  products.  Mr.  Spencer  uses  the  words 
"power"  and  "reality"  and  refuses  any  classifica- 
tion of  it  under  the  more  characterizing  terms  of 
materialism  or  idealism.  This  powerism,  or,  as 
he  himself  calls  it,  "transfigured  realism,"  has 
been  coupled  by  Mr.  Spencer  with  the  religious 
emotion  and  elevated  into  a  form  of  religion, 
since  called  agnosticism — owing  to  the  fact  that 


HERBERT  SPENCER.  to; 

the  one  predicate  of  unknowableness  has  been 
proleptically  assigned  to  the  "reality"  in  its  aspect 
of  a  supreme  being  worthy  of  our  greatest  rever- 
ence. Mr.  Spencer  does  not  admit  this  power  to 
be  necessarily  of  a  lower  order  than  mind,  but 
states  that  it  may  have  modes  of  activity  as  far 
excelling  intelligence  and  will  as  intelligence  and 
will  excel  mechanical  motion. 

Mr.  Spencer  exploited  several  fields  of  inquiry 
similar  to  those  investigated  by  Comte,  and  found 
radical  ground  of  difference  from  him  on  some 
points.  •  Objecting  to  Comte's  classification  of 
the  sciences,  he  held  that  no  rational  serial  order 
could  be  allotted  to  them.  In  place  of  Comte's 
principle  of.  division  according  to  decreasing 
generality,  he  puts  the  division  of  "abstract"  and 
"concrete."  He  distinguishes  abstractness  from 
generality  by  saying  abstractness  means  the  de- 
tachment from  the  incidents  of  particular  cases, 
while  generality  means  manifestation  in  numer- 
ous cases.  His  classification  of  the  sciences  is 
accordingly  as  follows : 

1.  Abstract  sciences  (those  which  treat  of  the 
forms  in  which  phenomena  are  known  to  us) : 
logic  and  mathematics. 

2.  Concrete  sciences  (those  which  treat  of  the 
phenomena    themselves) :     astronomy,    geology, 
biology,  psychology,  sociology,  etc. 

3.  Abstract  -  concrete     sciences  :     mechanics, 
physics,  chemistry. 

Mr.  Spencer's  theory  as  to  religions  is  that 
they  originated  mostly  from  ancestor  worship. 
As  to  ethics,  he  accounts  for  the  moral  sentiments 
in  the  same  way  as  he  accounts  for  the  categories  : 
namely,  that  they  are  the  product  of  heredity  and 
the  innumerable  experiences  of  ancestors.  He 


io8  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

takes  sides  with  the  Hedonists  or  those  who 
regard  pleasure  as  the  chief  end  of  conduct.  He 
recommends  the  recognition  of  the  claims  of  both 
egoism  and  altruism  and  regards  as  the  best  that 
conduct  which  harmonizes  with  the  apparent 
course  of  evolution.  He  admonishes  and  directs 
by  reminding  us  of  the  methods  of  nature.  He 
advises  that  governments  limit  themselves  to 
their  appropriate  police  and  military  function. 
He  ardently  takes  sides  with  the  let-alone  or 
laissez-faire  economists  against  all  upholders  of 
doctrines  that  savor  of  socialism. 

The  effort  visible  on  every  page  to  support  his 
positions  by  empirical  illustration  drawn  from 
contemporary  science  and  personal  observation 
and  research,  has  obtained  for  Mr.  Spencer's 
metaphysics  favored  attention  from  those  whose 
studies  lie  mainly  in  the  physical  sciences. 


QUESTIONS. 

PART  I. 

THALES.     (p.   7)     i.  Why  is  Thales   generally   re- 
garded as  the  first  philosopher? 

2.  To  what  philosopher  are  we  mainly  indebted  for 
what  we  know  of  Thales? 

3.  To  what  school  of  philosophers  did  Thales  belong? 

4.  From  what  element  did  Thales  say  the  universe 
arose? 

5.  What    explanation    does    Aristotle    offer   for    the 
origin  of  Thales'  doctrine? 

6.  Was  Thales  a  polytheist? 

ANAXIMANDER.    (p.  8)     i.  To  what  school  of  phi- 
losophers did  Anaximander  belong? 

2.  What  treatise  did  Anaximander  write? 

3.  To  what  writers  are  we  mainly  indebted  for  what 
we  know  of  the  theories  of  Anaximander? 

4.  Give   the   only   sentence   which   has   been   handed 
down  to  us  in  Anaximander's  own  words. 

5.  What  does  Anaximander  assign  as  the  first  cause 
of  the  universe? 

6.  The  speculations  of  what  later  schools  does  An- 
aximander's explanation  of  the  origin  of  things  resem- 
ble? 

7.  Outline  Anaximander's  scheme  of  the  creation  of 
the  constellations,  the  sun,  the  earth,  men,  and  animals. 

8.  What  is  the  final  catastrophe  awaiting  the  earth, 
according  to  Anaximander? 

9.  What  is  meant  by  the  doctrine   of  the   "Infinite 
Series  of  Worlds"? 

ANAXIMENES.     (p.  10)     I.  To  what  school  of  phi- 
losophers did  Anaximenes  belong? 

2.  From  what  element  did  Anaximenes  say  the  uni- 
verse arose? 

3.  Quote  Anaximenes'  own  statement  of  his  doctrine. 

4.  Explain    Anaximenes'    doctrine    of    condensation 
and  rarefaction. 

5.  How  was  the  doctrine  of  "air"  probably  suggested 
to  Anaximenes? 

109 


no  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

6.  What   facts   regarding  the   moon   is  Anaximenes 
said  to  have  discovered? 

7.  What   famous   doctrine   of  a  later  date   does  the 
doctrine  of  air  resemble? 

LATER  IONIANS.  (p.  11)  Name  the  two  minor 
Ionian  philosophers  and  their  doctrines. 

PYTHAGOREANS,  (p.  12)  I.  To  what  science  did 
Pythagoras  render  considerable  service,  and  in  what 
did  this  service  principally  consist? 

2.  What  school  of  ethics  did  Pythagoras  cultivate? 

3.  What   did   the    Pythagoreans   believe   to   be    "the 
element  of  existence"? 

4.  Give  the  Pythagorean  table  of  Contraries. 

5.  From  what  number  did  the  Pythagoreans  evolve 
all  numbers? 

6.  Explain  the  Pythagorean  doctrine  of  the  "Music  of 
the  Spheres." 

7.  Explain  the   Pythagorean  doctrine  of  metempsy- 
chosis. 

8.  In  what  book  of  Plato's  do  we  find  the   Pytha- 
gorean doctrine  of  transmigration  described? 

9.  Name  the  chief  elements  of  the  Pythagorean  moral 
code. 

XENOPHANES.  (p.  14)  i.  To  what  school  of 
philosophers  did  Xenophanes  belong? 

2.  What  is  the  great  doctrine  of  the  Eleatics? 

3.  What  did  Xenophanes  write  ? 

4.  "Xenophanes    was    the    first    of    the    pantheists." 
Criticise  this  statement. 

5.  What  peculiar  opinions  regarding  the  earth,  the 
sun,  and  the  stars,  are  attributed  to  Xenophanes? 

PARMENIDES.  (p.  15)  i.  Who  has  written  a 
dialogue  which  bears  the  name  of  Parmenides? 

2.  What   metrical   work   did   Parmenides   write,   and 
how  much  of  it  is  extant? 

3.  State  Parmenides'  doctrine  of  "the  one." 

4.  Quote  a  famous  epigram  of  Parmenides. 

5.  What  emotion  did  Parmenides  regard  as  the  ruling 
power  in  the  work  of  creation? 

ZENO  OF  ELEA.  (p.  16)  i.  Of  whom  was  Zeno 
of  Elea  a  favorite  disciple? 

2.  State  the  Eleatic  Zeno's  argument  against  the  idea 
of  plurality. 


QUESTIONS.  in 

3.  State  and  illustrate  the  four  arguments  of  Zeno  of 
Elea  against  the  possibility  of  motion. 

4.  What  refutation  of  the  Achilles  puzzle  of  Zeno  of 
Elea  was  propounded  by  John  Stuart  Mill? 

EMPEDOCLES.      (p.    18)     I.  What   poem   did    Em- 
pedocles  write? 

2.  What   are    the    four    roots    of   things    detailed    by 
Empedocles? 

3.  State  Empedocles'  doctrine  of  "love"  and  "hate." 

4.  What  doctrine  of  sensation  did  Empedocles  origi- 
nate? 

5.  How  did  plants  and  animals  originate,  according 
to  Empedocles? 

6.  From    what    doctrine    did    Empedocles    deduce    a 
vegetarian  rule? 

HERACLITUS.   (p.  19)     i.  What  modern  school  has 
adopted  important  principles  of  Heraclitus? 

2.  What   nickname   was   bestowed   on   Heraclitus   by 
the  ancients? 

3.  What  is  Heraclitus'  doctrine  of  "flux"? 

4.  To  what  element  did  Heraclitus  ascribe  the  origin 
of  all  things? 

5.  What  illustration  did   Heraclitus   employ  in   sup- 
port of  his  statement  that  "strife  rules  the  world"? 

DEMOCRITUS.       (p.    20)     i.  What    nickname    was 
bestowed  on  Democritus  by  the  ancients? 
.  2.  What  school  of  philosophy  did  Democritus  found? 

3.  State  the  Atomic  theory. 

4.  To  what  single  sense  did   Democritus  reduce  all 
sensation? 

5.  What  are  the  only  two  primary  qualities  of  matter, 
according  to  Democritus? 

6.  What  was  the  moral  theory  of  Democritus? 

THE  SOPHISTS,   (p.  22)     i.  What  vocation  did  the 

Sophists  follow? 

2.  Did  the  Sophists  have  one  common  philosophical 
system? 

3.  In  what    respect   did   the    Sophists   resemble   one 
another? 

4.  Name  the  most  notable  Sophists. 

ANAXAGORAS.      (p.    22)     State    Anaxagoras'    doc- 
trine of  "fragments." 


1 1 2  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

SOCRATES,      (p.    23)     i.  To   what   writers   are    we 
mainly  indebted  for  what  we  know  of  Socrates? 

2.  In  what  one  respect  did  Socrates  consider  him- 
self wiser  than  other  men? 

3.  What  is  the  "elenchus"  of  Socrates? 

4.  What  doctrine  did  Socrates  put  in  the  place  of  the 
Sophists'  statement  that  virtue  rests  on  opinion? 

5.  What  was  Socrates'  view  as  to  God? 

6.  How  did   Socrates  account  for  the  ignorance   of 
mankind  as  to  the  origin  of  the  world? 

7.  What,  to  Socrates,  was  the  true  object  of  knowl- 
edge and  the  summum  bonumf 

8.  State   Socrates'   doctrine  regarding  "justice"   and 
"injustice." 

9.  Why   did   Socrates   discard   rhetoric   for  the   dia- 
logue? 

10.  What  did  Socrates  expect  from  "definitions"? 

11.  In  what  dialogue  of  Plato's  do  we  find  an  account 
of  the  death  of  Socrates? 

THE  MEGARICS.   (p.  27)     I.  Who  was  the  founder 
of  the  Megarian  school  of  philosophy? 

2.  State  in  what  ideas  the  Megarian  school  stands  re- 
lated to  the  Eleatic  and  Socratic. 

3.  What  nickname  was  given  to  the  Megarics  by  the 
ancients,  and  for  what  reason  was  it  given? 

THE  CYRENAICS.  (p.  28)     I.  Who  was  the  founder 
of  the  Cyrenaic  school  of  philosophy? 

2.  How    did    the    Cyrenaics    interpret    the    Socratic 
"good"? 

3.  In  what  book  of  what  writer  have  we  an  account 
of  the  Cyrenaics? 

4.  What  modification  did  the  Cyrenaics  add  to  their 
summum  bonumf 

THE  CYNICS,     (p.    29)     i.  What    is    the    primary 
meaning  of  the  word  "cynic"  in  the  Greek  language? 

2.  Who  was  the  founder  of  the  Cynic  school  of  phi- 
losophy? 

3.  Compare    the    view    of   the    Cynics    with    that    of 
Socrates  regarding  poverty. 

4.  Who  is  the  most  famous  of  the  Cynics? 

5.  Is  the  Cynical  movement  important  to  cosmology 
or  to  ethics? 


QUESTIONS.  113 

PLATO,   (p.  30)     I.  State  Plato's  doctrine  of  ideas. 

2.  What  great  controversy  in  the  Middle  Ages  turned 
upon  a  question  first  stated  by  Plato? 

3.  Give  Plato's  speculation  as  to  the  prenatal  exist- 
ence of  the  soul,  and  its  bearing  on  his  theory  of  ideas, 
and  morals. 

4.  By   what   name   is    Plato's   doctrine   of  the   prior 
vision  and  memory  of  the  soul  called? 

5.  "Plato  is  a  monotheist."    Is  this  true,  and  in  what 
way? 

6.  What  analogy  did  Plato,  in  common  with  many  of 
the  ancients,  advance  in  reference  to  the  world? 

7.  What  is  Plato's  famous  doctrine  of  love? 

8.  For  what  reason  does   Plato,   in  his  "Republic," 
advise  the  banishment  of  poets  and  all  but  the  gravest 
musicians? 

9.  How  does  Plato  relate  the  individual,  the  family, 
and  the  state  in  the  "Republic"? 

10.  Name  some  of  the  best-known  dialogues  written 
by  Plato. 

THE  SKEPTICS,    (p.  34)     i.  Who  was  the  founder 
of  the  ancient  Skeptic  school  of  philosophy? 

2.  Whom  did  the   Skeptics   most   resemble   in  their 
teachings? 

3.  To   whose   writings   are   we   mainly   indebted   for 
what  we  know  of  the  Skeptics'  doctrines? 

4.  State  the  doctrines  of  the  Skeptics. 

5.  What  other  name  is  given  to  the  Skeptics? 

6.  What  Skeptical  school  did  Arcesilaus  found? 

THE  EPICUREANS,    (p.  34)     i.  How  many  books 
did  Epicurus  write? 

2.  Of  how  many  books  of  Epicurus  have  we  frag- 
ments? 

3.  What  did  Epicurus  place  above  everything  in  phi- 
losophy? 

4.  What  idea  did  Epicurus  carry  to  great  extremes? 
Give  an  example. 

5.  What   school   did   Epicureanism  resemble   in   the 
choice  of  a  summum  bonumf 

6.  Describe  the   Epicurean  definition  of  "pleasure," 
and  show  its  difference  from  the  Cyrenaic. 

7.  What  is  the  Epicurean  theory  as  to  the  origin  of 
the  world? 


.114  ANCIENT  PHILOSOPHY. 

8.  What  is  the  Epicurean  theory  of  the  soul,  and  of 
perception? 

9.  What  is  the  Epicurean  theory  as  to  the  gods? 

10.  What  Roman  poet  faithfully  describes  the   Epi- 
curean theory  of  the  universe?    What  is  the  title  of  th( 
poem  in  which  he  does  so? 

ARISTOTLE,  (p.  37)  i.  To  what  historian  are  we 
chiefly  indebted  for  what  we  know  of  the  life  of  Aris- 
totle? 

2.  By  what  nickname  were  the  followers  of  Aristotle 
known  and  why? 

3.  State  the  difference  between  Aristotle  and   Plato 
on  the  subject  of  "ideas,"  and  give  Aristotle's  illustra- 
tion. 

4.  State    Aristotle's    distinction    between    "art"    and 
"experience,"  and  give  his  illustration. 

5.  What  science  did  Aristotle  create? 

6.  Explain  and  illustrate  what  is  meant  by  a  syllogism. 

7.  What  are  categories? 

8.  How    many    categories    did    Aristotle    postulate? 
Name  them. 

9.  What  are  predicables? 

10.  How   many  predicables   did  Aristotle   postulate? 
Name  them,  with  Aristotle's  illustration. 

11.  Give  Aristotle's  fourfold  root  in  metaphysics. 

12.  What  is  Aristotle's  idea  of  God  and  into  what 
trinity  did  he  resolve  this  conception? 

13.  What     did     Aristotle     regard     as     the     highest 
pleasure? 

14.  What  is  Aristotle's  rule  or  definition  of  wisdom? 

15.  In  what  respect  did  Aristotle  differ  from   Plato 
in  his  views  on  government? 

16.  Name  some  of  Aristotle's  best-known  works. 

THE  STOICS,  (p.  41)  i.  In  what  centuries  did 
Stoicism  flourish? 

2.  Who  was  the  founder  of  Stoicism? 

3.  From  what  is  the  name  "Stoic"  derived? 

4.  What  is  the  Stoic  summum  bonum? 

5.  What  is  the   Stoic  definition   of   manhood   in   its 
ethical  sense? 

6.  Give  the  Stoic  opinion  as  to  pleasure  and  pain,  the" 
objection  raised,  and  the  answer  of  the  Stoics. 

7.  What  did  the   Stoics  make  the   supreme  law  for 
mankind?  Quote  the  Stoic  aphorism  on  this  point. 


QUESTIONS.  US 

8.  Give   an    illustration    of   the    extremes    to    which 
Stoicism  led. 

9.  Give  Cleanthes'  and  Chrysippus'  interpretations  of 
the  great  ethical  law  of  the  Stoics. 

10.  What  is  meant  by  the  Stoic  doctrine  of  "Apathy"? 

11.  What  important  element  did  the  Stoics  first  point 
out  to  physical  science?    Illustrate  this  by  their  theory 
of  light  and  heat. 

12.  What  is  meant  by  the  Stoics'  "pneuma"? 

13.  Name  some  of  the  great  Stoics. 

14.  Into  what  school  did  Stoicism  latterly  converge? 

THE    NEOPLATONISTS   AND   THE   GNOSTICS. 

(p.  47)     i.  In  what  doctrine  do  the  Neoplatonists  fol- 
low Plato? 

2.  What  ethics  did  the  Neoplatonists  teach? 

3.  What  principle  did  the  Neoplatonists  introduce? 

4.  How  was  Neoplatonism  a  religious  movement? 

5.  Who  was  the  most  notable  exponent  of  Neoplato- 
nism? 

6.  What  Neoplatonist  is  principally  remembered  on 
account  of  his  attacks  on  Christianity? 

7.  What  does  the  general  name  of  Gnosticism  stand 
for? 

8.  Name  a  distinguished  exponent  of  Hellenic  Gnos- 
ticism. 


PART  II. 

THE  FATHERS,  (p.  49)     i.  Into  what  three  groups 
are  the  Fathers  divided? 

2.  What  is  the  study  of  the  Fathers  called? 

3.  Name  the  four  great  Fathers. 

4.  What  is  the  best-known  work  of  St.  Augustine? 

THE  ARABIAN  PHILOSOPHERS,     (p.    51)      I.   Of 

what  great  movement  were  the  Arabian  philosophers 
largely  the  cause,  and  why? 

2.  What  did  Algazzali  teach? 

3.  Who  was  the  ablest  and  most  famous  teacher  of 
the  Arabian  school,  and  what  are  his  writings  called? 

4.  Upon  what  Greek  philosopher  did  the  Arabian  phi- 
losophers depend? 


Ii6  MEDIAEVAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

THE  SCHOOLMEN,     (p.  54)     i.  During  what  cen- 
turies did  Scholasticism  flourish? 

2.  Why  is  the  name  Schoolmen  or  Scholastics  given 
to  the  philosophers  of  the  Middle  Ages? 

3.  Name  the  two  opposite  camps  of  "the  Great  Con- 
troversy" and  state  to  what  it  had  reference. 

4.  How   did   the   Scholastic   controversy   happen   to 
arise? 

5.  Name  some  of  the  famous  Schoolmen  and  state 
which  side  each  took  on  the  question  at  issue. 

6.  What  great  book  did  Thomas  Aquinas  write? 

7.  By  what  title  is  Thomas  Aquinas  often  referred  to, 
and  why? 

8.  What  were  his  followers  called? 

9.  Who    were    the    opponents    of    the    doctrines    of 
Aquinas,  and  from  whom  did  they  derive  their  name? 

10.  What   was   the   main   difference   of   opinion   that 
existed  between  the  Thomists  and  the  Scotists? 

11.  Who  was  the  last  of  the  Scholastics,  and  which 
side  did  he  take? 

ROGER  BACON,     (p.   58)     I.  In   what   century   did 
Roger  Bacon  live? 

2.  Was  Roger  Bacon  a  Schoolman? 

3.  Name  Roger  Bacon's  great  books. 

4.  Name  the  three  means  of  knowledge,  according  to 
Roger  Bacon. 

5.  What  science  did  Roger  Bacon  consider  the  basis 
of  all  the  sciences? 

6.  What  department  of  thought  was  mostly  benefited 
by  Roger  Bacon? 

BRUNO,  (p.  60)     I.  What  is  Bruno's  principal  book? 

2.  Of  what  system  in  science  was  Bruno  an  earnest 
advocate? 

3.  What  is  Bruno's  doctrine  of  monads? 

CAMPANELLA.    (p.  62)     To  what  class  of  opinion 
does  Campanula's  theory  of  the  world  belong? 


PART  III. 

FRANCIS  BACON,  (p.  63)  i.  What  is  the  gen- 
eral title  of  Francis  Bacon's  principal  philosophical  pro- 
ductions? 


QUESTIONS.  117 

2.  What  are   "induction"  and  "deduction"?     Which 
did  Francis  Bacon  advise? 

3.  Why  is   Francis   Bacon   considered  the  father  of 
modern  science? 

4.  State  the  four  steps  of  the  modern  scientific  proc- 
ess and  compare  it  with  Francis  Bacon's. 

5.  State  the  four  classes  of  "idola,"  as  arranged  by 
Francis  Bacon. 

DESCARTES,  (p.  67)  I.  Name  Descartes'  princi- 
pal books. 

2.  What  is  the  method  of  Descartes  called  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  Francis  Bacon? 

3.  What   is   the  first   great  truth,    as   announced   by 
Descartes? 

4.  Give  Descartes'  three  main  arguments  for  the  ex- 
istence of  God. 

5.  What  doctrine  did  Descartes  enunciate  regarding 
lower  animals? 

LATER  CARTESIANS,  (p.  69)  I.  Give  the  names 
and  nationalities  of  the  two  greatest  Cartesians  after 
Descartes. 

2.  What  was  Malebranche's  doctrine  as  to  God,  the 
soul,  and  the  material  world?    What  name  is  given  to 
this  doctrine? 

3.  Of    what    general    class    of    religious    thinkers    is 
Spinoza  the  most  distinguished? 

LEIBNITZ,  (p.  70)  i.  Name  the  great  doctrine  of 
Leibnitz,  and  tell  what  doctrine  of  the  Cartesians  it 
was  intended  to  supplant. 

2.  Describe   Leibnitz's  great  theory,   using  his  own 
illustration. 

3.  What  is  the  Leibnitzian  theory  of  monadology? 

HOBBES.  (p.  71)  i.  To  what  general  class  of 
thinkers  does  Hobbes  belong? 

2.  What  did  Hobbes  hold  to  be  the  proper  method  in 
psychology? 

3.  What  truth  regarding  sensations  was  pointed  out 
forcibly  by  Hobbes? 

4.  What     principle     regarding     memory     was     first 
pointed  out  and  most  clearly  illustrated  by  Hobbes? 

LOCKE,  (p.  73)  i.  What  is  the  title  of  Locke's  most 
famous  book? 


ii8  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

2.  On  what  two  things  did  Locke  rest  all  knowledge? 

3.  What  was  Locke's  view  as  to  innate  ideas? 

4.  Explain     Locke's     distinction     of     ''simple"     and 
"complex"  thoughts  arising  from  sensation. 

5.  What  are  the  primary  and  secondary  qualities  of 
matter? 

6.  Of  what  school  is  Locke  said  to  have  been  un- 
wittingly the  forerunner? 

CONDILLAC.  (p.  76)  i.  By  what  name  are  Con- 
dillac  and  his  followers  known? 

2.  In  what  department  of  thought  besides  meta- 
physics did  Condillac  distinguish  himself? 

BERKELEY,  (p.  76)  i.  What  is  the  name  given  to 
the  philosophy  developed  by  Berkeley? 

2.  What  did  Berkeley  say  about  matter? 

3.  What  sort  of  reality  did  Berkeley  postulate  for  the 
external  world? 

HUME.  (p.  77)  i.  What  is  Hume's  definition  of 
mind? 

2.  To  what  two  things  did  Hume  reduce  all  knowl- 
edge? 

3.  What  did  Hume  say  about  the  categories? 

4.  Give   Hume's  argument  against  free  will. 

THE  SCOTTISH  SCHOOL,  (p.  79)  i.  What  is 
usually  regarded  as  the  leading  doctrine  taught  by 
Reid? 

2.  What  principle  did  Reid  perceive  as  the  cause  of 
the  error  in  Hume's  skepticism? 

3.  Whom  did  Reid  blame  for  originating  the  error 
he  sees  to  underlie  modern  philosophical  skepticism? 

4.  What    illustration    did    Reid    use    to    explain    his 
theory  of  "innate  judgments"? 

5.  What  was  Reid's  answer  to  the  sensationalists? 

6.  What  did  Sir  William  Hamilton  mean  by  the  term 
"belief"  according  to  his  own  explanation? 

7.  What  did  Hamilton  rest  on  belief? 

8.  What  name  is  sometimes  given  to  Hamilton's  phi- 
losophy? 

9.  How    does    Hamilton    subdivide    his    "uncondi- 
tioned"? 

10.  What  is  Hamilton's  doctrine  of  contradictories? 

11.  What  did  Dr.  Thomas  Brown  say  of  the  relation 
between  philosophical  and  religious  skepticism? 


QUESTIONS.  119 

KANT.  (p.  84)  i.  What  commonly  accepted  theo- 
ries of  physical  science  are  said  to  have  been  first  enun- 
ciated by  Kant? 

2.  What   are    the   titles    of    Kant's    most    important 
works? 

3.  What  is  the  main  idea  of  the  theory  known  as 
transcendentalism  ? 

4.  What  three  transcendental  ideas  does  Kant  hold  to 
be  of  great  importance  to  morality? 

5.  Give  the  most  notable  moral  maxim  enunciated  by 
Kant. 

FICHTE.  (p.  86)  i.  From  what  philosopher's  sys- 
tem was  Fichte's  derived? 

2.  What  name  is  given  to  the  philosophy  of  Fichte? 

3.  Repeat  Fichte's  statement  which  accounts  for  the 
existence  of  the  not-self. 

4.  What   thing  is   accredited   the    first   place   in   the 
Fichtean  scheme,  and  how  is  it  said  to  act? 

5.  What  did  Fichte  say  is  the  only  proper  motive? 

6.  What  is  the  absolute  ego,  according  to  Fichte? 

7.  What  was  Fichte's  view  as  to  the  quality  and  use- 
fulness of  the  world? 

8.  What  noted  pessimist  adopted  a  leading  doctrine 
from  Fichte,  and  what  is  that  doctrine? 

SCHELLING.  (p.  89)  i.  What  thought  did  Schell- 
ing  adopt  from  Fichte? 

2.  What  thought  did  Schelling  adopt  from  Spinoza? 

3.  State  the  ruling  doctrine  of  Schelling's  system. 

4.  What  is  the  main  difference  between  the  system 
of  Schelling  and  that  of  Fichte? 

5.  What  school  showed  high  appreciation  of  Schell- 
ing? 

6.  What  important  new  doctrine  did  Schelling  adci  to 
transcendentalism  ? 

HEGEL,  (p.  91)  i.  What  is  the  great  Hegelian 
paradox? 

2.  Give  Hegel's  explanation  of  the  process  of  crea- 
tion, with  his  illustration  of  pure  light. 

3.  State  the  doctrine  of  "flux." 

4.  What  is  Hegel's  doctrine  of  perception? 

5.  What  is  Hegel's  definition  of  God? 

6.  What    Christian    moral    principle    especially    does 
Hegel  fit  in  with  his  main  doctrine? 


120  MODERN  PHILOSOPHY. 

COMTE.    (p.  94)     i.  What  are  the  names  of  the  phi- 
losophy and  of  the  religion  founded  by  Comte? 

2.  What  is  the  title  of  Comte's  great  work? 

3.  What  main  service  is  Comte  said  to  have  done  to 
science,  and  what  science  is  he  said  to  have  created?    . 

4.  Give  Comte's  law  of  the  three  states,  and  illustrate 
them. 

5.  Into   what   two   departments    does    Comte   divide 
sociology? 

6.  What  outline  does  Comte  advance  as  the  history 
of  sociological  speculation? 

7.  Give  the  hierarchy  of  the  sciences,  according  to 
Comte. 

8.  What  is  Comte's  principle  of  arrangement  in  his 
classification  of  the  sciences? 

9.  What   objection   to   Comte's   classification   of  the 
sciences  has  been  presented,  and  what  answer  has  been 
returned  by  its  defenders? 

10.  Describe  Comte's  "Religion  of  Humanity." 

n.  What  are  the  main  ideas  of  Comte's  system  of 
ethics? 

THE  PESSIMISTS,    (p.  98)     I.  What  religion  does 
Schopenhauer's  philosophy  closely  resemble? 

2.  To  what  did  Schopenhauer  ascribe  the  origin  of 
everything? 

3.  What  kind  of  morality  did  Schopenhauer  inculcate? 

4.  What  is  Schopenhauer's  definition  of  pleasure? 

5.  What  Greek  philosopher  seems  to  have  taught  one 
doctrine  somewhat  similar  to  the  main  one  of  Schopen- 
hauer? 

6.  Give    Schopenhauer's   explanation   of   "conscious- 
ness"; its  cause  and  its  destiny. 

7.  What    is    Schopenhauer's    great   practical    recom- 
mendation to  remedy  the  ills  of  life? 

8.  Wherein     lies    the    most    obvious    weakness     of 
Schopenhauer's    most   notable   practical    recommenda- 
tion? 

9.  How  did  Hartmann  modify  Schopenhauer's  most 
notable  recommendation? 

10.  What  two  characteristics  does  Hartmann,  in  op- 
position to  Schopenhauer,  allow  to  pleasure? 

11.  By  what  method  does  Hartmann  defend  his  hy- 
pothesis   of    pessimism,    and    what    noted    illustration 
does  he  use? 


QUESTIONS.  121 

12.  To  what  does  Hartmann  ascribe  the  origin  of 

everything? 

HERBERT  SPENCER,  (p.  101)  I.  What  is  the 
name  given  by  Mr.  Spencer  to  his  philosophical  sys- 
tem? 

2.  What  is  the  great  principle  on  which  Mr.  Spencer 
builds  his  philosophy,  and  how  does  he  define  it? 

3.  Outline  the  theory  Mr.  Spencer  accepts  as  the  cor- 
rect one  for  the  origin  of  the  world. 

4.  State  the  categories  postulated  by  Mr.  Spencer. 

5.  What    is    the  •  difference    between    Spencer's    and 
Hamilton's  doctrines  of  "belief"? 

6.  Give    Mr.     Spencer's    doctrine    of    "transfigured 
realism"  in  reference  to  the  origin  of  the  categories. 

7.  What  is  the  difference  between  the  empiricism  of 
Locke  and  that  of  Spencer? 

8.  Give  Mr.  Spencer's  explanation  of  the  fact  that  the 
principle  of  causality  is  a  necessity  of  thought. 

9.  To   what  origin  does   Mr.   Spencer  ascribe   "im- 
pressions" and  "ideas"? 

10.  What  is  Mr.  Spencer's  view  as  to  "reality"  in  the 
ego  and  in  the  external  world? 

n.  What  attribute  does  Mr.  Spencer  assign  to  the 
"reality"  in  order  to  arouse  the  religious  sentiment 
and  make  of  his  system  a  religion? 

12.  Give  Mr.  Spencer's  classification  of  the  sciences, 
and  his  comparison  of  it  with  that  of  Comte. 

13.  What   is   the  summum  bonum  according   to   Mr. 
Spencer? 

14.  What  explanation  does  Mr.  Spencer  give  for  the 
origin  of  the  moral  sentiments? 

15.  What  is  Mr.  Spencer's  criterion  of  good  conduct? 

16.  What  is  Mr.  Spencer's  principal  doctrine  in  eco- 
nomics? 


VOCABULARY. 

Absolute,  The.  The  First  Cause  considered  specially  as 
underived  and  self-existent.  [Lat.  absolvo,  to  free  or 
loose  from.] 

Acosmist.  One  who  denies  the  existence  of  the  world;  for 
example,  a  pantheist  in  contradistinction  to  an  atheist. 
[Gr.  a,  not,  and  kosmos,  world.] 

Agnosticism.  The  doctrine  that  the  first  cause,  as  well  as 
the  reality  underlying  phenomena,  is  unknowable.  As 
a  form  of  religion,  the  worship  of  this  unknowable  first 
cause.  [Gr.  a,  not,  and  gnostikos,  knowing.] 

Altruism.  The  doctrine  which  inculcates  the  sacrificing  of 
self  in  the  interest  of  others.  [Old  Fr.  altrui,  others.] 

Apathy.  Freedom  from  passion.  The  condition  recom- 
mended by  the  Stoics,  in  which  passion  was  subdued  to 
reason.  [Gr.  a,  not,  and  pathos,  passion.] 

A  Posteriori.  The  general  way  of  reasoning  in  which  we 
ascend  from  viewing  objects  or  phenomena  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  their  causes.  It  is  the  opposite  of  the  a  priori 
way.  [Lat.] 

A  Priori.  The  general  way  of  reasoning  in  which  we  de- 
scend from  general  or  self-evident  principles  or  causes 
to  the  knowledge  of  their  consequences.  [Lat.] 

Asceticism.  The  exercise  of  virtue  according  to  a  severe 
standard,  including  celibacy  and  poverty.  [Gr.  askesis, 
exercise.] 

Category.  One  of  the  forms  of  thought  ;  one  of  the 
thoughts  on  which  all  other  thoughts  rest.  A  category 
is  held  to  be  contributed  by  the  understanding,  as  it  is 
self-evident  and  incapable  of  any  proof  or  disproof. 
Thus:  time,  space,  causality,  etc.  [Gr.  kategoreo,  to  predi- 
cate.] 

Cosmogony.  Any  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  ordered  uni- 
verse. [Gr.  kosmos,  world,  and  gignomai,  to  come  into 
being.] 

Cosmology.  The  general  science  of  the  universe,  its  struc- 
ture, etc.  [Gr.  kosmos,  world,  and  logos,  discourse.] 

Deduction.  The  drawing  of  a  particular  truth  from  a  gen 
eral  principle.  The  syllogism  is  the  form  or  framework 


VOCABULARY.  123 

of  deduction.     The  opposite  process  is  called   "Induc- 
tion."    [Lat.  deduco,  to  draw  from.] 

Determinism.  Necessitarianism.  The  doctrine  that  the 
will  is  wholly  determined  by  the  motives.  The  opposite 
doctrine — that  of  free  will — is  called  "  Indeterminisrn  " 
or  "  Libertarianism." 

Dialectics.  Logic.  The  art  of  reasoning.  [Gr.  dialektos, 
speech.] 

Dogmatism.  The  making  of  assertions  on  one's  own  or 
other  authority  without  offering  sufficient  additional  evi- 
dence. [Gr.  dogma,  from  dokeo,  to  think.] 

Egoism.  In  metaphysics,  the  doctrine  that  our  own  exist- 
ence is  the  only  thing  of  which  we  can  be  certain.  In 
ethics,  the  word  is  now  used  as  the  opposite  of  "Altru- 
ism," to  denote  the  doctrine  that  inculcates  the  promot- 
ing of  the  interests  of  the  self.  [Lat.  ego,  I.] 

Empiricism.  The  tracing  of  all  knowledge  to  experience. 
The  practice  of  observation  and  experiment.  Hence  also 
the  words  "empiric"  and  "empirical"  to  designate 
the  person  so  doing,  and  statements  based  on  experience. 
[Gr.  empeiria,  experience.] 

Ethics.  Moral  philosophy.  The  science  of  conduct.  [Gr. 
ethos,  conduct.] 

Evolution.  The  progress  of  beings  by  virtue  of  the  power 
of  heredity  and  by  any  natural  mode  of  selection  by 
which  the  fittest  types,  individuals,  or  things  are  pre- 
served. [Lat.  <?,  out,  and  volvo,  volutum,  to  roll.] 

Hedonism.  The  doctrine  that  pleasure  is  the  proper  end 
and  aim  of  conduct.  [Gr.  hedone,  pleasure.] 

Hypothesis.  A  supposition  suggested  as  a  possible  expla- 
nation of  any  facts,  and  submitted  for  verification  or  re- 
jection. [Gr.,  a  supposition.] 

Idealism.  The  doctrine  that  the  objects  commonly  believed 
to  be  external  to  our  senses  are  merely  ideas. 

Indeterminisrn.  Libertarianism.  The  doctrine  of  free  will. 
The  opposite  of  "Determinism." 

Induction.  The  way  of  reasoning  by  which  we  infer  for  a 
whole  class,  something  we  have  observed  in  a  number  of 
individuals  of  that  class.  Reasoning  upward  from  the 
particular  to  the  general.  [Lat.  in,  and  duco,  to  lead.] 

Materialism.  The  theory  that  everything  is  reducible  to 
matter. 


124  VOCABULARY. 

Metaphysics.     The  branch  of  inquiry  that  seeks  the  truth 

underlying   the    phenomena   that   are    presented  to  the 

senses.     The  general  science  of  being.     Ontology.    [Gr. 

meta,  beyond  or  after,  and  physika,  the   things  of  nature, 

physics.] 
Metempsychosis.     The  transmigration  of  the  soul  from  one 

body,  at  its  death,  to  another.     [Gr.] 
Monad.    The  ultimate  element.    According  to  Leibnitz,  an 

atom  charged  with  a  vital  force.     [Gr.  monas,  unit.] 
Monotheism.     The  belief  that  there  is  one  God  only.    [Gr. 

monos,  one;  theos,  God.] 
Mystic.     One  who  presents  a  theory,  obscure,  imaginative, 

and,  in  its  nature,   unverifiable  in  ordinary  experience. 

[Gr.  mystikos,  initiated  into  secret  doctrines.] 

Necessitarianism.  Necessarianism.  The  doctrine  that 
there  is  no  free  will.  Determinism. 

Nominalism.  The  doctrine  that  the  general  term  is  but  a 
name.  The  opposite  of  "Realism."  [Lat.  nomen,  a  name.] 

Non-ego.  The  object  or  external  world,  as  distinguished 
from  the  ego  or  self.  [Lat.,  not-self.] 

Objective.  Relating  to  the  external  world,  called  the  non- 
ego  or  object.  The  opposite  of  this  word  is  "subjec- 
tive." 

Ontology.  The  branch  of  inquiry  that  treats  of  being  in 
general.  Metaphysics.  [Gr.  on,  being,  and  logos,  dis- 
course.] 

Pantheism.  The  doctrine  that  the  universe  is  God.  [Gr. 
fan,  all,  and  theos,  God.] 

Pessimism.  The  doctrine  that  the  world  is  incurably  bad 
and  that  life  under  any  conditions  is  still  an  evil.  [Lat. 
pessimus,  the  worst.] 

Phenomenon.  An  appearance,  as  distinguished  from  the 
"noumenon"  or  reality  supposed  to  underlie  it.  [Gr., 
appearance.] 

Polytheism.  The  belief  in  many  gods,  together  with  the 
rejection  of  the  idea  of  one  supreme  and  infinite  God. 
[Gr.  polys,  many,  and  theos,  a  god.] 

Psychology.  The  science  of  mind.  The  study  of  the 
facts  of  consciousness.  [Gr.  psyche,  the  soul,  and  logos, 
discourse.] 


VOCABULARY.  125 

Realism.  The  doctrine  of  the  Schoolmen  of  the  Middle 
Ages  that  general  terms  represent  real  things,  independ- 
ently of  the  particular  things  they  classify. 

Sensationalism.  The  theory  which  places  sensation  first 
and  makes  it  the  reality  from  which  all  thought  is  de- 
rived. 

Skepticism.  The  negative  attitude  in  philosophy.  Ancient 
skepticism  denied  the  possibility  of  knowledge  and  rested 
everything  on  opinion.  Modern  philosophical  skepticism 
is  usually  the  denial  of  the  existence  of  a  reality  under- 
lying phenomena.  [Gr.  skeptomai,  to  look  about,  so  as 
to  observe  carefully.] 

Sociology.  The  science  which  treats  of  the  laws  under 
which  society  develops. 

Subjective.  Relating  to  the  self,  called  the  ego  or  subject. 
The  opposite  of  this  word  is  "objective." 

Summum  bonum.  That  which  constitutes  the  principal 
end  of  conduct  in  any  system  of  morals.  [Lat.,  the  chief 
good.] 

teleology.  The  method  of  inquiry  which  regards  every- 
thing in  the  light  of  its  purpose,  as  apparently  designed 
by  the  Creator.  The  doctrine  of  "  Final  Causes."  [Gr. 
telos,  an  end,  and  logos,  discourse.] 

Theosophy.  In  its  widest  sense,  a  theory  of  God  and  of 
His  works  which  is  not  based  on  reason  or  evidence  but 
on  the  theorist's  own  claims  to  a  special  inspiration.  •  It 
is  usually  markedly  capricious.  [Gr.  thcos,  God,  and 
sophia,  knowledge.] 

Transcendentalism.  The  doctrine  that  there  is  a  philo- 
sophical consciousness  beyond  the  ordinary  faculties  of 
perception,  and  that  the  a  priori  facts  can  be  perceived 
and  known  by  it,  while  they  nevertheless  completely 
transcend  the  reason. 


INDEX. 


Key  to  Pronunciation.— VOWELS  :  a  in  late,  a  in  fat,  a  in  far;  e  In 
me,  6  in  m8t ;  1  in  fine,  I  in  tin,  i  in  police ;  6  in  note,  6  in  n5t ;  u  in 
tune,  u  in  nut,  u  in  rude ;  y  in  my,  y  in  hymn.  CONSONANTS  :  9  in 
$ent,  -e  in  «an ;  g  in  gem,  g  in  get ;  K  =  German  ch ;  N  =  ng,  but  is 
silent  (the  French  nasal) ;  §  =  z.  Italic  letters  are  silent. 


PAGE 
Ab'elard    ........    56 

Absolute,  of  Hamilton  ...    83 
of  Hegel     .......    93 

ofSchelling    ......    90 

Abuba'cer     .......    52 

Agrios'ticism     ...         .    .  106 

Air,  Anaximenes'  doctrine  of  .    10 
Alber'tus  Mag'nus     ....    57 

Alcibi'ades    ......  27,34 

AlFara'bi     .......    52 

Algazza'li  or  Alga'zel     .    .   52,  53 
AlKen'di      .......    52 

Am'brose  ......  49,  50,  51 

Anaxag'oras  ......    22 

Anaxiinan'der    .....     8,  99 

Anaxim'eneg  .......    10 

Angelic  Doctor  ......    58 

An'selm    ........    56 

Ante-Ni'cene  Fathers     ...    49 
Antis'thene§      ......    29 

Apathy,  Stoic  doctrine  of  .    .    44 
Apostolic  Fathers  .    ....    49 

Aqui'nas   ........    57 

Arabian  philosophers    ...    51 
Arcesila'us    .......    34 

Aristip'pus    .    .    .    .    .    .  28,  36 

Ar'istotle  ........    37 

Athana'sius  [-shius]  ....    49 

Atomic  theory  .    .    .    .  20,  21,  36 

Au'gustine     .....  48,  49,  50 

Aver'roe§  .......  52,  53 

.......    52 


Bacon,  Francis  ......    63 

Bacon,  Roger    ......    58 

Ba'sil    .........    49 

Belief,  of  Hamilton    .    .    .  82,  83 
of  Herbert  Spencer     .    .    .105 


PAGE 

Berkeley 76 

Bonaventu'ra 59 

Brown,  Dr.  Thomas  ....  83 

Bru'no 60 

Brii'tus 46 

Campanel'la 62 

Carte'sians  [-zhanz]   .    .    .    67-70 

Categories,  of  Aristotle     .    .  40 

of  Kant 85 

of  Herbert  Spencer     ...  104 

Ca'to 46 

Chrysip'pus 44 

Chrys'ostom 49 

Cic'ero 46 

Classification  of  the  sciences, 

byComte 97 

by  Herbert  Spencer    .    .    .  107 

Clean'theg 44 

Clem'ent  of  Alexandria ...  49 

Clement  of  Rome 49 

Common -sense  Philosophy     .  80 
Compendium  of   Philosophy, 

by  Hobbes 59 

Comte  [c6Nt] ' 94 

Condillac  [coN-de-yak']  ...  76 
Confessions,  by  St.  Augustine 

48,  51 

Contraries,  the  Pythagorean  .  13 

Coper'nican  system    ....  61 

Cornu'tus,  the  Stoic  ....  46 

Cousin  [koozaN'] 79 

Cra'teg,  the  Stoic 42 

Crat'ylus 30 

Critical  philosophy,  the     .    .  85 

Critiques',  of  Kant     ....  85 

Cyn'ics 29 

Cyp'rian    .    , 49 


126 


INDEX. 


127 


PAGE 
.  28 
.  49 
.  49 


Cytena'ics  .... 
Jyr'il  of  Alexandria  . 
Cyril  of  Jerusalem  . 


Darwin 103 

Democ'ritus 20 

Descartes  [dakarf]  ....  67 
Di5g'ene§  Laer'tius  [-shius] .  8,  37 
Diogenes  of  Apollo'nia  ...  11 
Diogenes  the  Cynic  ....  29 
Discourse  of  Method,  by  Des- 
cartes   68 

Dung  Sco'tus 58 

Eclectic  school 46 

Elefit'ics 14-18 

Elenchus,  of  Socrates  [eleng'- 

kus] 25 

Emped'ocle? .18 

En'ne-ads,  by  Plotinus   ...    47 
Epicte'tus,  the  Stoic  ....    46 

Epicure'ans 34 

Epicu'rus 36 

Epipha'nius 49 

Epistle  of  Bar'nabas  ....    49 
Erlg'ena,  Scotus    ....     .55 
Essay  concerning  Human  Un- 
derstanding, by  Locke .    .    73 
Eu'clid  of  Meg'ara     ....    27 

Evolution 103 

Exclusion,     Francis    Bacon's 

doctrine  of 65 

Expulsion     of     the     Trium- 
phant Beast,  by  Bruno     .    61 

Fathers,  the 49 

Fichte  [flK'teh] 86 

Fire,  Anaximander's  doctrine  of  9 
Heraclitus'  doctrine  of    .    .  20 
Flux,  Heraclitus'  doctrine  of  20 
Fragments,  Anaxagoras'  doc- 
trine of  23 

Ga'len 52 

Gnos'tics 48 

Got'gias 22,  34 

Gregory  of  Nazian'zus    ...    49 

Gregory  of  Nyasa 49 

Gregory  Thaumatur'gus     .    .    49 
Gregory  the  Great      .    .    .  49,  50 

Ham'ilton 79, 81 

Hart'mann 99, 100 

Hegel  [ha'gel] 91 

Heracli'tus 19,  93 

Hll'ary 49 

Hip'pias 22 

Hip'po 11 


PAGE 

Hobbes     „    . 71 

Hum*   .........    77 

Idealism,  of  Plato 32 

of  Berkeley ,76 

of  Fichte 88 

ofSchelling 89 

Ido'la,  of  Francis  Bacon     .    .    66 
Ignatius  [igna 'shius] ....    49 
Infinite,  the,  of  Anaximander      9 
Infinite  Series  of  Worlds,  doc- 
trine of  the     ....  10, 11 
Instaura'tio  Mag'na,  by  Fran- 
cis Bacon 65 

16'nians 7-11 

Irenae'us 49 

Jerome' 49,50 

Jus'tin  Mar'tyr 49 

Kant 84,103 

Leib'nitz 70 

Le'o 49 

Levi'athan,by  Hobbes  ...  72 

Locke 73 

Log'os,  Stoic  doctrine  of  the  43,  44 

Love,  Empedocles'  doctrine  of  18 

Parmenides"  doctrine  of  .    .  16 

Plato's  doctrine  of  ....  33 

Lu'can,  the  Stoic 46 

Lucre'tius  [-shius]      ....  37 

Malebranche  [malbroNsh']     .  69 

Mai'cus  Aure'lius 46 

Meditations,  by  Descartes      .  68 

Megar'ics 27 

Metempsy^Tio'sis 14 

Middle  Academy 34 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  his  refuta- 
tion of  Zeno 17 

on  Hamilton 82 

Monadol'ogy,  Leibnitz'  theory 

of        ....    .    ...  71 

MSn'ads,  of  Bruno     ....  61 

Motion,     Zeno's     arguments 

against 17 

Music  of  the  Spheres     ...  14 

Nebular  hypothesis  ....  103 

Neopla'tonists 47 

Ne'o-Pythago'reans    ....  14 

New  or  Middle  Academy  .    .  34 

Nom'inalism 65 

Numbers,    the     Pythagorean 

doctrine  of 13 


128 


INDEX. 


PAGE 

Occasional  Causes,  Cartesian 

doctrine  of 70,  71 

O'pus  Ma'jus,  by  Roger  Bacon  59 

Opus  Mi'nus 59 

Opus  Tertium  [ter'shium]  .  .  59 
Organs,  Empedocles'  doctrine 

of 19 

Or'igen 49 

Parmen'ideg 15 

Peripatet'ics 38 

Persius  [per'shius],  the  Stoic 

44,46 

Pessimists,  the 88,  98 

Phi'lo 48 

Pla'to 30 

Plato,  the  Republic  of  ...  88 
Ple'num  and  void,  Democri- 

tus'  doctrine  of    ....    21 

Ploti'nus 47 

Plurality,   the  Eleatic  Zeno's 

arguments  against  ...  16 
Pneu'ma,  Stoic  doctrine  of  11,  46 
Polarity,  Schelling's  doctrine  of  90 

Pol'ycarp 49 

Por'phyry 47,  55 

Positivism 94, 95 

Post-Nl'cene  Fathers  ...  49 
Practical  idealism,  of  Fichte  .  88 
Practical  philosophy,  of  Kant  86 
Pred'ieables,  of  Aristotle  .  .  40 
Pre-established  harmony,  of 

Leibnitz 70 

Primitive  Fathers 49 

Prod'icus 22 

Protag'oras 22 

Pyr'rho 34 

Pyr'rhonists,  the 34 

Pythago'reans,  the     ....    12 

Realism 55 

Reasonableness  of  Christian- 
ity, by  Locke 74 

Reid 79 

Religion        of        Humanity, 

Comte's 94,  98 

Reminiscence,     Plato's     doc- 
trine of 32 

Renaissance,  the    .    .    .    .  52. 60 

Republic,  Plato's 33 

Romantic  School 90 

Roots,  Empedocles' doctrine  of 

the  four 18 

Roscelll'nus 54,  55 

Schel'ling.    .......  89 

Schlegel  [shla'gel] 90 

Schleiermacher,   on     Spinoza 

[shli'ermaKer] 70 


PAGE 

Schoolmen,  the 64 

Schopenhauer  [sho'penhower] 

86,  88,  99 

Sco'tists 58 

Scottish  school 79 

Sen'eca 46 

Sensationalism 76,  79 

Shepherd  of  Her'mas ....  49 
Sillog'raphist,  Timon  the  .  .  34 
Sil'loi,  by  Timon  of  Phius  .  .  34 
Simplicius  [simplish'ius]  .  9,  15 

Skeptics 22,  34 

Smith,  Adam 76 

Soc'rateg 23 

Sdph'ists,  the 22,  25 

Spen'cer,  Herbert 101 

Spino'za  ....  61,  69,  70,  90 
Stag'irlte,  the  (Aristotle)  .  .  37 

Stew'art,  Dugald 81 

Stil'po,  the  Stoic 42 

Sto'ics,  the 41 

Strife,  Heraclitus'  doctrine  of .    20 
Sum'ma    Theolo'gia?,    by  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas .    ...    58 

Syl'logism 38 

Synthetic  Philosophy     .    .    .  101 

Tertul'lian 49 

Tha'leg 7 

Theeete'tus,  Plato's  dialogue  .  34 

Thomas  Aqui'nas 57 

Tho'mists,  the 58 

Three  states,Comte's  lawof  the    95 

Ti'mon  of  Phl'us 34 

Transcendentalism    .    .    .    85-94 
Transfigured  realism,  of  Her- 
bert Spencer 106 

Transmigration,  Pythagorean 

doctrine  of 14 

Treatise   of   Human   Nature, 

by  Hume 78 

Trinity,  of  Aristotle  ....  40 

Unconscious,  Hartmann's  doc- 
trine of  the    .    .    .    .  99,  101 

Water,  Thales'  doctrine  of .  .  7 

Xenophanes'  doctrine  of  .  15 
Will,  Schopenhauer's  doctrine 

of  the 99,  101 

William  of  Champeaux  [sh6N- 

po'] 66 

William  of  Oc'cam  .  .  .  .  68 

Xenophanes  [zen5fanee2]  .  .  14 
Xen'ophon  [zen'-]  .  .  .  .  23,  28 

Ze'noofE'lea 1C 

Zeno,  the  Stoic  ......    41 


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